Ultra file compression software?

[FragTek]

Ok so I'm looking to backup my entire music folder because lately I've been really paranoid of losing everything I have which is over 80+ gigs of pure metal... I would cry for a week of I lost all of it.

So my question to all of you is this: What format gives the absolute maximum file compression? Zip, RAR, other? I plan to waste a day compressing it all before I distribute it on all of the hard drives I own to make sure it stays safe

Thanks in advance!

 

[JN]

I've found tar.gz (gzip) to be the best compression method by far. You can download a command line compression tool or it's integrated into some windows programs.

One thing i will say tho is compression is really not worth it for MP3, they aint gonna go _much_ smaller than they already are, and ur just asking for problems (corruption etc) when you try to restore large compressed archives.

Personally i'd just use the crappy windows backup program to merge them into a single file, or put them in an uncompressed zip/rar file.

 

[FragTek]

Roger dodger XMS. Thanks for the input.

 

[Nagaru]

I would tar them all together, I use 7zip for Windows.

 

[MikeEnIke]

Aye, 7-Zip is a great compressor, but mp3's are already compressed music files and like Jim said won't compress much, I think an unzipped RAR or even a zipped one is your best bet, but for future reference I've always used 7-zip for huge amounts of compression.

 

[Nagaru]

You can use 7-Zip to make tar archives which as far as I know are uncompressed.

 

[JN]

You can use 7-Zip to make tar archives which as far as I know are uncompressed.

Yeah, tar just puts the files into a single file without compression, you then need gzip if you want to compress that file (hence the .tar.gz extension was born)