What is the best archive tool?

What is the best archive tool and what are the best file formats? zip? tar? etc

One file format best for all? or is one best for video, while another is best for somthing else?

Thanks guys!

hmmm... wouldn't let me edit my first message....

I am very interested in archiving/zipping some dvd movie files to store and make space on my hard drive. I could free up almost 200gigs. The files are 4,7g. I tried zipping with normal compression which just zip format gave me a zipfile size of 4.2g. I also tried TAR which actually increased the size of the file to 4.9g. I would really like to move to a storage drive, but I don't want to lose any quality. So any suggestions would be appreciated.

just get 7-zip and use that, its the best compression tool online and its free

I appreciate your suggestion, 7-zip is what I was using. It only has zip, tar, and 7s. zip only slightly saved space, tar actually increased the size of the file, and when I tried 7s the projected time was well over an hour so I skipped that one. I might as well just make dvds to store them, that would take less time than using 7s. I'll see if there is a more up to date version, maybe they have added formats.

You can use WinRaR. I found it best .
You can download it from
http://download.cnet.com/WinRAR-32-bit/3000-2250_4-10007677.html

good theme