Good day all

I currently have Omnisphere 1 in 6 parts on my external hard drive which is about 40Gb (6gb a file) compressed. I will be extracting and installing on my main drive but my main question is:

- What would be the best method of backing up the 6 files? Eg: Winrar, 7 zip etc..
- Would compressing these files (separately) to fit on 4.7gb disks create problems in future (i've got a lot of 4.7gb disks)?
- Could I compress all 6 files into a smaller file (I would keep it on my external drive)

I don't know much about compressing (other than extracting) and i'd love to hear any options you guys may have

Thanks in advance

 

First decompress your files until you have the .iso files. Make a compression test, if winrar shows a low compression ratio (>90%) it means the data files are already compressed, so there's no point in compressing them.

You can easily use Winrar to make DVD sized volumes. If the data is already compressed disable the compression (store mode). It doesn't hurt to add a %5 recovery record which means you can repare until 5% of corrupted data.

7z is similar to Winrar. In fact it can compress more, but winrar is the king of usability. An alternative would be an imaging soft like Acronis backup / trueimage. Or Aomei, though hasn't been tested as much as acronis.

 

Dual-layer DVD-Rs & burners exist. (~7,900MB for DL)
Dual-layer BD-Rs & burners exist. (~23,098MB for SL or ~44GB for DL)

I have one drive that can do the above.

 

i agree with some of what @Xupito say, but even if compression does not help i think its best to multi part rar to about size of 100mb it make copy and move go quicker in future

i would not be surprise if burning 100mb part goes faster than burning single 4.3gb file to dvd too

if i am like you and have many dvds, i would compress (even at little compression Fastest setting in winrar) with 100mb part with recovery record, i would burn two sets if it is important because dvds can be scratched, and some of them start to split after time

does 7z really beat 128mb best compression in winrar5 ????

 

Would I have to set the ' split to volume, size ' to 100mb to achieve this? And would it create the files one usually sees like .r00, r01 etc?

I could use your above settings and create a custom volume right?

I remember using one of these towers once. Good times

 

Last edited: May 2, 2016

That's right, only for the multipart and recovery record features is worth using Winrar. What I don't understand is your preference for 100MB parts. This was intended for the extinct Iomega ZIP 100MB drives. For burning it doesn't matter the size of number of files, that's for sure.

Yes, the 7z format is another compression algorithm, newer and more efficient that the rar (I think that is the same used in Unix .bz2, but not sure). Some people complains that Winrar 5 has few important new features, because the most important is simply allowing a larger disctionary (128 MB).

When I say more efficient I mean it can compress more, I don't know how it compares to the rar format in velocity for the same compression level. One of the goodies of WinRar is that it's very optimized, it takes the best of all CPU cores.

Well, the modern Winrar versions use the .part01.rar, .part02.rar, etc nomenclature, but yes, this is the option you've to set.

I could gladly share my Winrar settings, but there must be hundreds of tutorials on the net. PM me if you want my settings or I can prepare ones for 100MB volumes and other settings of your choice. Winrar has an option to export/import settings to one file.

Finally, about BD and DVD-DL discs/drives, they're expensive but the BD worth it if you burn a lot of data. I never recommend using DVD-DL discs because they are very slow and very expensive.

 

No need too, you've shown me more than I asked for, Thank you

 

Nimbuss if you have a fast connection think about a cloud storage service...

 

rule of thumb:
7za is good for executables (bad choice in this case)
RAR is good for multimedia
RAR5 is not better in multimedia compression than RAR! You might save 2 megs on one file while wasting 2 megs on another, RARv5 isnt as compatible as RARv3 - in the end there wont be any benefit at all

i tested recompressing my akai library to rar5 and noticed a slight gain on some and a small increase on others. In the end i'd even waste diskspace using RARv5 over RARv3

small benchmark of a 300m big Steam DB container
262m 7za.mx5.7z (normal compression)
262m 7za.mx9.7z (ultra)
240m rar3.m3.rar (normal)
240m rar3.m5.rar (best)
236m rar5.m3.rar (normal)
235m rar5.m5.rar (best)

save your time and do not use BEST COMPRESSION but normal (-m3 switch) - avoid SOLID archive creation and consider using the RECOVERY RECORD option (-rr switch), just in case some bits go mad and in the end do always check the archives created (-t switch)

so the commandline would be like this : rar a -ep1 -m3 -rr -t ArchiveToCreate.rar FolderToCompress

your approximate savings compressing the files should be 20% using RAR / 21% using RAR5 / 10% using 7zip

If you really want to backup the data on DVD-R(-DL) you should consider using the terminal commands as with it you can create parts of different sizes to suit your needs.

rar a -v1024m -v1024m -v1024m -v1024m -v354m -v1024m ... .etc... (afair i used 4450m per single layer ROM)

resulting
[DVD1 4450m + filesystem overhead]:
part1-4 (1g)
part5 (354m)
[DVD2]:
part 6-9 (1g)
part10 (351m)
etc ...

if you wonder why not using 4450m as part size : due to compatibility with filesystems - joliet wont handle it, fat wont handle it, etc...

as filesystem on dvd-rom you should use UDF and additionally joliet for compatibility

after burning you have to test the written data or leave the whole idea and backup stuff on another harddrive - its pointless archiving stuff on dvd as you cant tell when the disc becomes corrupted as the quality differs - and real quality media is way more expensive than harddisk space - and count in the time preparing the data + burning the stuff at reasonable speed + testing written data et etc ... and if one disks fails at later point its all wasted time. Who knows when DVD reader and writers become an unaffordable relic on pc

last thing to consider is: cant you just backup the images as they are without compression? 20% isnt that much considering nowadays harddisk capacities.

 

Last edited: Mar 25, 2016

when i move or copy large amounts of data from one drive to another i find large files (multi gb) go slower than smaller files, but too small, like .mid (4kb) go even slower, i find around 100mb move along steady speed

 

Yes I remember those days also. Thank god for NAS Devices.

 

When many Small files(like 4kb each) makes up 100mb, there will be too many address names to process, takes more cpu than 1 100mb file.

 

I use 3.5 floppy discs for large sample libraries.

Take something like Kontakt Session Pro Strings, which is about 32Gb, then use Winrar to split everything into 1.44mb files. At the end of the job, which only takes a few days, you'll have to have 22,223 floppy disks ready to go. Load them up one at a time (aaah ... love that loading sound. Ehnk-ehnk-ehnk ...) and in about 7 months, you're all done! Easy as cake! When your new computer dies, it'll only take another 7 months load-time to put all the floppy-disk rar files onto your new Solid State Drive and then you can decompile it back into your fantastic - can't wait to play with it - sample library.

Can't recommend this more strongly!

 

Makes sense. Have you tested TeraCopy?

 

Cardamom, I bet you love your futuristic 3.5" floppy, (No I'm not talking about that you sick bastards) when the rest of us are still on 5 1/4".
Next thing you'll say is Star Wars will be a big hit and have a sequel or two.

 

next time i must make copy of large data i will see if i can xtract some files to see with tera copy