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
Some systems use hard links where one file appears in multiple places but only occupies space once. Most archive formats do not support this and will save each link as a separate, full-sized file, ballooning the archive's size. It is possible for a compressed archive to