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Most Compression format


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I always enjoy flogging a dead horse!

Depends on the content of the file you're compressing... I'd say uharc for media files, and 7-zip for general stuff. but they aren't too common, so your overall best bet is probably rar files, like coroner said.

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Archiver Compressed size Ratio

7-Zip (7z format) 5445402 100%

WinRAR 3.10 6004155 110%

WinAce 2.3 6242424 115%

CABARC 1.0 6455327 119%

7-Zip (zip format) 9461621 174%

PKZIP 2.50 9842800 181%

FILE SET: The GIMP 1.2.4 for Windows after full installation (127 subfolders, 1304 files totaling 27,128,826 bytes). The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It can be downloaded from www.gimp.org.

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It depends on the files you are compressing. Try them out yourself with some files and see for yourself.

The best format in my opinion is RAR, there are other formats out there that can compress better (albeit only a tiny bit better) but RAR has so many powerful options such as spliting archices into multiple files, built in recovery records (similar to PAR files), compression profiles, archive authenticity verification and excellent SFX modules (GUI and DOS based for example). Also RAR is the most used format on the web these days.

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What saint dark said.. 7-zip is really good but its slow. The version of the client I have seems to forget to release memory too, so after compressing a few files I find I need a restart.

Rar is nice though. Fairly quick and decent compression. Ace also seems nice, though I've not done anything with that myself.

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  [saint dark said:
,Nov 26 2003, 23:02] the 7-zip format compress better, but only 10% better than rar so that doesnt matter considering that 7-zip is extremely slow at compressing and de-compressing

Very true :yes:

I recently looked at using 7-Zip at work instead of WinZip however everyone agreed it is cheaper to use winzip because of the time saved vs. compressed size. Employee time is A LOT more expensive than a few KB (or MB in extreme situations).

In the end they went for WinRAR because of the 100% ZIP compression (so customers that still use WinZip are not affected) and because of the SFX being built in (something that doesnt come with WinZip for commercial use!).

WinRAR is easily the best because it gets excellent compression levels and is very quick. Also I think the RAR Vs 7Zip levels are actually about 3-7% not 10% (well maybe with some examples). However I have compressed loads of things that RAR gets smaller than 7Zip and the WinRAR UI is excellent (7Zip's is awful at the moment!)

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  deadmonkey said:
Just a quick example...

I had 5 txt files which are 47.9KB in total.

in 7-Zip they are compressed to 16.5KB

in RAR they are compresse dto 13.5KB

in 7-Zip SFX they are compressed to 85.0KB

in RAR SFX they are compressed to 64.5KB

WinRAR wins :D

woohoo, try compressing your entire drive's contents and see which is smaller (Y) text files compress really well anyway, and two tests is hardly enough to declare a winner...

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God, I can't stand it when people jump on the "yeah, me too" bandwagon when they hear some propaganda about new software supposedly being the be all / end all for one certain thing.

Do your own testing before jumping in and saying "x" is better than "y"...

For example, here's a test text file compression test using "Maximum" values for WinRar, WinZip, and 7-zip ...

post-12-1069923584.gif

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  gameguy said:
woohoo, try compressing your entire drive's contents and see which is smaller (Y) text files compress really well anyway, and two tests is hardly enough to declare a winner...

i know it is not an excellent test but it is just a quick example. It is just like the test they show as an example on the &-Zip website when compressing the GiMP. They obviously only used it because 7-Zip compressed it better than WinRAR. They wouldnt use something where RAR got better compression would they?!

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  sryo said:
Archiver Compressed size Ratio

7-Zip (7z format) 5445402 100%

WinRAR 3.10 6004155 110%

WinAce 2.3 6242424 115%

CABARC 1.0 6455327 119%

7-Zip (zip format) 9461621 174%

PKZIP 2.50 9842800 181%

Doesn't this just tell you to go out and get WinRAR?

Come on, only a 10% compression penalty from 7-Zip yet it's widely supported, easy to use and quick.

Why waste your time with anything else?

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seriously i believe popularity is as important as compression ratio.

if u are compressing for ur own usage than ofcourse compression comes first.

my experience:

WinAce

WinRar

WinZip

(I am naming the applications)

I had liked to try out 7Zip but dont think many people in my circle use it.

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I would go for WinZip. Even though it is much limited to the file formats compared to WinRar, it has much faster compression. You can extract and compress much faster and effiecient than other programs. I have a friend that works at Symantec and he says that they also use WinZip. WinRar is most likely to be built for home users while WinZip is more of a professional line of compression.

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home users/professional users

now this is weird. i dont think winrar is not secure or good enough to be used by organisation.

Zip just happen to be the most widely used format. That's it. That does not make WinZip the software of choice when it cant handle the alternative technologies.

WinAce and WinRar on the other hand accepts other formats too. :)

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  LiLViEtDuDe917 said:
I would go for WinZip. Even though it is much limited to the file formats compared to WinRar, it has much faster compression. You can extract and compress much faster and effiecient than other programs. I have a friend that works at Symantec and he says that they also use WinZip. WinRar is most likely to be built for home users while WinZip is more of a professional line of compression.

How is it more effiecent? I suppose it depends on how you define efficiency with compression, but with WinRAR and 7zip clearly able to pack a lot more into a smaller file than Winzip, I fail to see how you may be interpreting Winzip's superior efficiency over the competition.

With WinRAR able to function within a console for scripting purposes, being able to support archives up to 8 terabytes (with Winzip maxed at 4GB), and lastly, having 128-bit encryption (where Winzip's encryption is very weak), WinRAR is far more suited to a professional enviroment than Winzip is.

My 2 cents.

  Quote
i dont think winrar is not secure or good enough to be used by organisation.

See post above regarding encrpytion.

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