best compression software

damien c · 02-03-2009, 18:36

i want to compress and back up almost 1tb of data but what is the best way to do it, i have tried winrar but it's not compressing the data enough all ideas welcome.

Hom3r · 02-03-2009, 18:41

winzip?

bonzoe · 02-03-2009, 19:02

Not all files compress very well, perhaps that is the cause of your problem. Sorry, can't remember the files which do not compress very well, but think that they are picture files - someone will correct me, I 'm sure.

admars · 02-03-2009, 19:22

files like jpg, mp3, avi won't compress well as they're already compressed. Files like .bmp, word docs will compress lots.

izarc http://www.izarc.org/ would let you try 7-zip and ace, which are usually better than zip or rar, but I doubt you'll notice massive improvements. You can always set the compression to various levels, maximum being slowest to compress but maximum compression etc.

CHiLL · 02-03-2009, 19:45

To be honest, WinRaR does everything you need. As people have said, it depends on the file types that you are compressing. 7-Zip is good, but I hear it has problems compacting.

alferret · 02-03-2009, 20:25

LHarc has high compression rates but alas AFAIK is no longer available or usable on the M$ OS formats other than that brief reminiscent moment from my past as offered up by others WINRAR gets my vote.

haydnwalker · 02-03-2009, 20:28

Most Music/Video formats, along with JPEG/Gif etc won't compact because they are compressed by nature as has previously been said. They do this by basically removing invisible data or reducing quality.

What kinds of files is it you are trying to compress?

02-03-2009, 22:22

http://kgbarchiver.net/

this may be worth a look?

damien c · 03-03-2009, 15:50

i shall have a look at those over the next few days the formats are basically iso's and mp3 aswell as avi etc.

Druchii · 03-03-2009, 15:51

ISo is compressed already, as is MP3 and AVI.

**Paul** · 03-03-2009, 16:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by damien c

i shall have a look at those over the next few days the formats are basically iso's and mp3 aswell as avi etc.

Just to repeat, all those are compressed already, so you wont get very far (just like trying to zip an already zipped file).

Matth · 03-03-2009, 17:09

ISO itself is not compressed (disc image), but the data in the disc image is quite likely to be already compressed.

If RAR doesn't do it, it is unlikely that anything else will do fantastically better, as RAR is a decent example of the "better than zip" compressers, though maybe some percent down on those that are tuned to hell for compression and hang the speed.