A Look at Data Compression

With the new year fast approaching many of us look to the unenviable task of backing up last years data to make room for more of the same. That being said, rojakpot has taken a look at some of the data compression programs available and has a few insights that may help when looking for the best fit. From the article: "The best compressor of the aggregated fileset was, unsurprisingly, WinRK. It saved over 54MB more than its nearest competitor - Squeez. But both Squeez and SBC Archiver did very well, compared to the other compressors. The worst compressors were gzip and WinZip. Both compressors failed to save even 200MB of space in the aggregated results."

Just use DiskDoubler

[mattkime]

Why mess around with compressing individual files? DiskDoubler is definitely the way to go. Hell, I even have it set up to automagically compress files I haven't used in a week.

Its running perfectly fine on my Mac IIci.

Re:Just use DiskDoubler

[SleepyHappyDoc]

Mac IIci? Has it finished compressing files since you bought it?

Re:More time = More compression

[Orgasmatron]

Speaking of unknown compression programs, does anyone remember OWS [faqs.org]?

I had a good laugh at that one when I figured out how it worked, way back in the BBS days.

Compress to 0K

[Anonymous Coward]

I always compress my compressed files over and over until I achieve absolute 0Kb.
I carry all data of my entire serverfarm like that on a 128Mb USB-stick.

Related Links Broken

[Karma Farmer]

The "related links" box for this story is horribly broken. Instead of being links related to the story, it's a bunch of advertising. I'm sure this was a mistake or a bug in slashcode itself.

I've searched the FAQ, but I can't figure out how to contact slashdot admins. Does anyone know an email address or telephone number I can use to contact them about this serious problem? I'm sure they'll want to fix it as quickly as possible.

Re:Speed

[Hangeron]

Oh, I wondered what the big empty blocks in the middle of the text were. I have ad blocking with this http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html [everythingisnt.com]

Re:Speed

[Karma Farmer]

But, if you were using mobile phones to transfer a 2.5 GB file between two seperate windows-only PCs, and you were willing to initiate a $10,000 dollar, 10 day file transfer using a proprietary windows-only compression scheme without any type of error correction or partial restart, then I agree that WinRK would be the best choice.

Pile of ad-laden shit article

[hazem]

I know not many of you actual RTFA, but that article was so damned annoying. There's a table in there - think it's to compare compression schemes? nope - it's for processors. There are red links.. article related? Nope - ad links. Blue underlined links - yup, for more ads.

What a steaming pile of shit. Happy new year.

Re:Speed

[Nutria]

When you're talking about GPRS, even transatlantic sneakernet would be faster (and cheaper).

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a stationwagon full of tapes."

or the updated "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with DVDs".

Or the even more updated "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with 500GB HDDs".