Best compression program (7-zip, WinZip, etc)

[Adcadet]

Hey gang,
I thought I remembered discussing this before, but a search doesn't turn it up. I'm looking for the best compression program. Easy to use, good compression, relatively fast, and something that provides some data protection for archiving stuff. I've got lots of old data (high school, college, grad school, and soon med school) that I want to keep around but that I'll rarely access. Some assurance that it's protected from corruption would be nice as well (don't they all provide some redundancy?). I'll still back this stuff up to DVD, by the way. Since I'll be archiving, some assurance that I'll be able to access the data in 5 years would be nice, so free as in speech would be great. I'm also cheap, so free as in beer would be preferred as well.

This guy likes 7-zip and IZArc - the only benefit I see to IZArch is maybe being able to read ISO's. I wonder if there's any way the Nero suite can do that without burning a disk. Source: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm

Thanks,
Adcadet

 

[Adcadet]

After thinking and reading a bit on Wikipedia, I realize my question has two parts: 1)what compression algorithm (i.e.-zip) should I use, and 2)what program (i.e.-7-zip, Windows built in thingy) should I use to create and/or read these files.

 

[LOST6200]

I pefer WinROAR over 7-zip, but what do I know/ I make the self extrapolating archives, so no appliction is necessray in the long runs.

 

[Stereodude]

Make .rar files (with a reasonable size like 20MB) then make a few PAR2 files from those and you'll have your data redundancy.

 

[MaxBurn]

Make .rar files (with a reasonable size like 20MB) then make a few PAR2 files from those and you'll have your data redundancy.

YES, file level parity is great.

I use the heck out of 7zip too because you don't have to worry about registering or using an unlicensed program and it just plain works.

 

[Chewy509]

From experience:

ZIP - Universal - Even Windows XP+ can read/write to archives. Provides decent compression.
TGZ (tar.gz) - Universal on *nix systems. Provides decent compression. WinZIP and WinRAR can read this format
L7 - Limited to Windows systems.
RAR - Provides excellent compression, but tools are rather limited. (WinRAR and some *nix tools).
BZ2 (tar.bz2) - Provides excellent compression for textual documents, *nix has native tools, and WinRAR reads format easily.

I've used ARC, ICE and a dozen others formats in the past, but ZIP, TGZ and BZ2 seem to just hand around... All 3 of the above formats are well documented and all have open source implementations.

If it was me, ZIP (with WinZIP) on Windows, and BZ2 (tar.bz2) on *nix systems.

Or don't bother with archiving at all, at least you know that you'll be able to get to your data without worrying about applications/formats.

 

[Mercutio]

WinRAR pisses me off.
I mostly make .BZ2s or plain old .zip files. I'm lazy and those are more or less the default compression tools for Linux or Windows.

 

[Will Rickards]

Review posted
here
and a follow-up on my favorite 7zip
here

 

[Adcadet]

7-Zip is impressive. The latest version is multi-threaded and does 7-zip, tar, and zip without any modifications. The 7z files can be created as SFX (self-extracting archives).


7z files seem pretty good. Speed is good on my machine, compression seems very good, and I can create SFX files making them very portable, and 7z is open source. What I'm wondering about, though, is how much redundancy, if any, 7z files provide. 7-zip provides a "store" option for the 7z, zip, and of course, tar files. I can't find any documentation about this option in 7-zip. Can somebody shed some light on this for me? Does it provide any data safety, and how?

 

[ddrueding]

What amount of data are we talking about? These days, most document collections don't need compression at all. Obviously, if it is over 4.7GB than compression could be worthwhile. As far as redundancy goes, why not just make multiple copies, stored in multiple places?

 

[Adcadet]

My academic and research stuff is a bit over 23 GB uncompressed. There a few other random things I'd like to back up, the largest of which is 3.7GB of wedding stuff; most of that size-wise is JPGs so I'm guessing those aren't very compressible.

I'm fine having multiple copies, but for simplicity sake I'd prefer to just have fewer copies that are more reliable than more copies that aren't as reliable. If compressing gives me a some safety than I'm fine sticking with two copies on DVD and one on my HD(s) or so.

And for the next project: figuring out how to safely store and backup all the pictures (JPGs from our Digital Rebel XT and some older pictures) that my wife takes.

 

[ddrueding]

JPGs aren't going to compress much no matter what, so you are probably looking at a 25GB dataset. 5-6 DVDs. Be sure that the program you are using will create multi-volume sets so you don't have to break it down manually.

 

[fb]

Smith Micro claims that their StuffIt v9.5 can compress JPGs with up to 30%, but I don't know how true it is.

By the way, I bought StuffIt v7.5 a few years ago (I really don't remember why.) But it's easy to use and the compression rate is also fine. I don't know if later versions has gotten more bloated though.

 

[Stereodude]

Be sure that the program you are using will create multi-volume sets so you don't have to break it down manually.

Nero can do this with it's backup tool.

 

[Adcadet]

7-zip can split it between archives by 1.44MB, 650MB, 700MB, and 4.48GB.

 

[Adcadet]

I still can't find a good explanation of why somebody would use the "store" compression level. What does this do? Does it provide some data integrity checks or something? Or does it just turn my jumble of folders and files into a single file?

 

[sechs]

I use WinRAR for archival purposes.

Compression is good and speed is acceptable. More importantly, RAR gives options to add recovery records and authenticity verification. This way, if an archive gets damaged, I can attempt to recover; and I can tell if someone has tampered with the archive.

 

[Will Rickards]

7-zip can split it between archives by 1.44MB, 650MB, 700MB, and 4.48GB.

Actually it can do it at those and custom ones you specify. A friend recently asked me for help creating 1MB spanned versions. You can specify the MB or KB.

7zip rocks, my personal favorite.

 

[Adcadet]

Thanks for the Clarification, Will. The Windows GUI has a space to specify parameters, which I haven't looked into at all. So why I say that it has a feature, I usually mean that there's a feature built into the GUI shell.

 

[Will Rickards]

yeah you can do it through the gui. You just type in the spanning combo.

 

[Sol]

You can probably get a bit of extra compression on jpegs produced by your average digital camera. I usually find that saving a jpeg in Photoshop, for example, with exactly the same size and everything gives a much smaller file. Admittedly that's another stage of lossy compression but it suggests that there is some squeezing that could be done...