Best Compression Utility?

Hey all. I'm planning on re-installing Windows soon, and I need to backup a lot of the stuff on my computer. I'm using my 20GB iPod to backup some stuff, but I need to compress a lot of it to fit it all on. I have a 27GB folder of videos and a 6GB folder of music, for example. What is the best way to compress these down? I tried zip, but it apparently has a max size of 4GB. RAR only seemed to cut the file size by a few MB. Any ideas? Thanks.

#87057

u can try rar or ace its more stable for big files than zip but i think that u reach the maxi ratio because video (divx) or mp3 is already compressed

for me the solution is to burn some video files on CD ! and save the rest on ur ipod

#87060

Chocolate

#87061

What about deleting them?

Do you not keep a seperate partition (or better still, seperate drive) to back stuff up to?

Have you tried SIT, ACE, LHA, MS-CAB, or JAR?

CAB would be favourite - that's what MS use to compress stuff on Windows discs.

Give WinAce or Stuffit a try

#87062

What about MS expand while were at it? ex: movie.av_

Btw, there is no use trying to compress any compressed format...

exxx: jpg, divx, mpeg, mp3... ect, ect... Its already been compressed... If you loose more than 20 MB on of the archives.... :bow:

edit:// As many of us know... Stuffit is bloated and slow. WinRAR is the best with hands down and feet on the floor.

#87072

thanks for the info, guys. i didnt know you couldnt compress already compressed file formats. better go out and buy some CDs

#87075

i think 7zip has a very high compresin ratio for there format

#87099

Originally posted by lostspyder@Dec 9 2003, 10:27 AM
i think 7zip has a very high compresin ratio for there format

Ya, that's what I was about to recommend. As far as I know it has the best comperssion ratio. And as for compressing .mp3 type stuff, if it compresses at all, it'll only be a few K at most.

#87105

Originally posted by Kurt871@Dec 9 2003, 01:55 PM
i didnt know you couldnt compress already compressed file formats.

You can but it doesn't really help the quality much and sometimes they get corrupted.

I know this cos my friend decided that he would try an zip his entire HD down to 10 kB by zipping it (84 times) !!! U can guess what happened... :lol: nu HD for him!

#87107

bzip2. Its wonderful.

If you set it to the highest compression, it beats the "mr. hankey" out of everything else.

And its "free".

I use "Power Archiver" in Windows for this.

#87188