Hey guys, I'm trying to compress alot of the files and folders on my PC to then move to a eternal HD and I'm having alot of difficulty trying to get any significant reduction of file size...I have tried youtube and such places but it's all poorly made videos from people who I guess are just winging it...

Is there anyone that knows a simple, straight-forward way of making this easier for me and others. It would save me such a headache...Cheers in advance guys

 

Apologies in advance if you already know this...
First step is to understand (a little) about the theoretical limitations.
Otherwise you might just have unrealistic expectations.
In case this is new for you, see (for example) this gentle introduction...
https://support.winzip.com/hc/en-us/articles/115011739808-Why-don-t-some-files-compress-very-much-

 

what you can't understand?
choose file(s) or folder(s) - add to archive - choose format (rar or rar4) - choose compression (max for maximum compression) - press OK - wait...
if file already compressed - you can't compress it more. you can't compress any archive files, most of audio/video (they are already compressed with codecs), file containers used by other programs (*.soundset for Presonus Studio One and other), encrypted files.

what do you want to compress?

 

or store some stuff in clouds maybe
I need multiple hard drives and things really take a lot of space anyway
but at some point it just makes no sense to handle huge amounts of data and from time to time it is good to get rid of stuff you dont need
with that win rar app you have like a new option when right click, add to archive
like Alula says, just do that, thats it, think you doing it right

got headache distract yourself w avenger thread that was funny

 

Last edited: Mar 12, 2020

You don't mention which kind of files are you trying to compress, so I can only guess.
Many files are already compressed, for example, installers, Kontak libraries, and more, so if you use WinRAR on these files, the compression ratio will be very low.
I also suppose that you already know that you can change the compression ratio in winrar options.

 

depends on what you want to compress - if you wanna compress already compressed data, it will not really work

for ex. let's say you have WAV audio files - if you compress them into RAR, they will be significantly smaller
if you convert those WAV files to FLAC, they will be of roughly same size as the RAR files mentioned above

if you have some WAV file of mostly silence, compressed will be much smaller than another WAV file of same duration but complex sounds

 

I think he wants to use a kind of batch function or a script to make RAR do it automatically.
For example if he has 1000 folders, make RAR 1000 archives automatically each with the folders name and its content. This is possible with WinRar!

maybe this can help you
- select all Folders and Files you want to compress
- right click and choose "Add to archive"
- now in the WinRar dialog choose "best" in the "Compession method"
- now go to the "files" tab
- select "each file into an own archive" (I dont know how its called in english version, but you will find it)

 

Last edited: Mar 12, 2020

For good compression I recommend 7Zip over Winrar. Used it lately to recompress my stuff on my external drives
and it saved me a lot of GBytes. But it depends - in some cases Winrar is still better but in others it isn't.
Also depends on the settings you set ;) and on the machine you use. The more memory you have, the higher
the compression ratio can be set. Otherwise at some point it will stop working because of low memory.

An important setting for good compression is the dictionary size.
By default it's set to 4MB in the RAR4 format (and below) and to 32MB in the RAR5 format.

As an Example I compressed an iso Image of Ableton Live 10.1.9, which has 2,87GB (uncompressed).

RAR compression ratio is set to highest
RAR5 format (32MB Dict) compresses to 1,42GB
RAR5 format (128MB Dict) compresses to 1,15GB

7Zip compression ratio is set to highest
LZMA2 (32MB Dict) compresses to 1,47GB
LZMA2 (128MB Dict) compresses to 1,20GB

But that's just for 1 file. If you want to compress several files, I recommend to select the option "solid archive".
That way all your files will be compressed as one solid package. If you don't select solid, every file will be compressed into
its own package, which increases the final size of the archive - BUT it also means: when you just want to decompress
one file of your archive, the whole package has to be decompressed first. Made that mistake in my early installers
which resulted into very small but slowly loading packages. Without solid compression everything loads up fast.



Therefore I compressed a folder with 2700 Presets and 12,5MB (uncompressed)

RAR compression ratio is set to highest, everything else is default
RAR5 format (non solid) compresses to 6,29MB
RAR5 format (solid) compresses to 2,97MB

7Zip compression ratio is set to highest, everything else is default
LZMA2 (non solid) compresses to 5,99MB
LZMA2 (solid) compresses to 2,72MB


As you can see: When it comes to single file compression Winrar is quite good but when you want to
compress a bunch of files, 7Zip is slightly better, even on default settings. And when you want to compress
a lot of files like samples, presets etc., solid archives are the way to go to save space.


So the essence of this little test in terms of Winrar is:
Use the RAR5 format (from v5.50 on it's set as default format), increase the dictionary size and make solid packages
from file collections.

 

Last edited: Mar 12, 2020

Thanks for all the detailed replies guys. My ignorance is evident from my OP. I had no idea about certain files being compressed already. Slightly a bit confusing still but I get roughly what you are all saying...Thanks alot everybody