Create a high-compression-level solid-compression archive in 7z format

7z a -t7z -m0=lzma2 -mx=9 -mfb=64 -md=32m -ms=on dir`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`.7z dir

Remarks:

• -si gets the input from stdin
• -m0=lzma2 use the LZMA2 compression method (See this superuser.com thread for information about LZMA2 method). Use only when GBs of memory is available.
• -mx=9 highest compression level
• -ms=on creates a solid compression, (tar-based formats that are solid compressions include tar.bz2, tar.gz) TODO

Optionally create a tarball first

$ tar cfv - dir/ | 7z a -si -t7z -m0=lzma2 -mx=9 -mfb=64 -md=32m -ms=on dir`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`.tar.7z

Remarks:

• - creates the default tarball filename

Create a multi-volume ZIP archive

$ 7z a -tzip -v14m archive.zip largedir/

Create a password protected archive and extract it

$ 7z a -t7z -p myarchive.7z file1.txt file2.png *.cpp

Extract it:

$ 7z x myarchive.7z

Create compressed multi-volume archive of a directory of multiple files and subdirectories

$ 7z a -t7z -mx=5 -v100m largedir ~/Desktop/Downloading/largedir/

7-Zip 9.04 beta  Copyright (c) 1999-2009 Igor Pavlov  2009-05-30
p7zip Version 9.04 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,2 CPUs)
Scanning

Creating archive largedir.7z

Compressing  largedir/largefile1.avi      
Compressing  largedir/largefile2.avi      
Compressing  largedir/largefile3.avi      
Compressing  largedir/largefile4.avi      

Everything is Ok

Extract

$ 7z e largedir.7z.001

7-Zip 9.04 beta  Copyright (c) 1999-2009 Igor Pavlov  2009-05-30
p7zip Version 9.04 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,2 CPUs)

Processing archive: largedir.7z.001

Extracting  largedir/largefile1.avi
Extracting  largedir/largefile2.avi
Extracting  largedir/largefile3.avi
Extracting  largedir/largefile4.avi
Extracting  largedir/largefile5.avi
Extracting  largedir

Everything is Ok

Folders: 1
Files: 5
Size:       463073364
Compressed: 104857600
$

Remarks:

• -t7z specifies type as 7z
• -v100m specifies volume size to be at most 100MB
• -mx=5 specifies level of compression in range 0 - 9 with 9 being the most compressed
• largedir is the name of the resultant archive, and if multiple volumes are created, the names are largedir.001, largedir.002, etc.