It is possible for a compressed archive to be larger than its original folder due to several technical factors:
Every compression tool, including 7-Zip, embeds metadata (file names, headers, and structure info) into the archive. For very small files or folders with complex structures, this overhead can exceed the space saved by compression. THICKER.7z
Using the "Store" level with encryption will encrypt file contents without any actual compression, which may slightly increase the final size due to encryption headers. Issues with "Long Content" in 7z It is possible for a compressed archive to
When dealing with large archives or extensive file paths, several limitations and bugs can occur: embeds metadata (file names