File Compression

[malakian88]

Hello. I have quite a few large files that I want to compress (a lot of games that i've torrented). I use WinRAR but I usually only get about a 95 - 92% compression ratio. I have had a few torrents I downloaded in many separate files, about 14 megs each, instead of one large archive. Does this aid in better compression? If it does, how can I archive files into smaller separate archives. Also, what else can I use compress files better?

Thanx

 

[alvino]

I'm not exactly sure, but I think WinZip can compress files.

 

[David Lindon]

It shouldn't make any differnece if they are seperate or in 1 large archive.

 

[Kage]

Compression works like this:

Basically the compression program (e.g. Winrar (an advanced version of WinZip)) finds gaps in code which it can take out, and puts this in memory, or makes the codes shorter and so saves loads of bytes, even megabytes of space. After you de-compress the file on the other end, it re-creates the code it had from memory, recreating the files file size.

What you will find is the programs you have downloaded can not be compresed down much farther.
EXE's usually can compress a bit, but other document files can more. So you will find that that is the max you can probably compress them, since this hold alot of code.

There might be more compression programs which might do more, but WinRar is the best I have heard of at this.

David's right in saying it shouldn't make a difference, though if all the games are in one file and you are compressing that whole file. It might be best to split the games up, and compress these all seperatly to lower them into smaller chunks, though it seems you couldn't do much else

Hope this helps

 

[chado]

kage is right. there are files that no matter how you compress, the size is still the same as original. i think it depends on type of file. im also using winzip right now.

 

[Kage]

Winzip is part of Winrar though. You can compress as ZIP and RAR archives. RAR tends to be better at compressing, and I tend to use this file format ratehr than ZIP.

You can download WinRar free, and is an evaluation version which lasts quite a while. Strangly though, after the evaluation has finished, it doesn't stop you from using it, it just warns you that your time is up when you open a file or something.

 

[malakian88]

thanx for the replies. I have learned much lol