Windows 7: File Compression

In looking for a means to backup my movies volume (~750GB), prior to sending that hard drive in for RMA, I decided to see if I could place them on a smaller drive (500GB), first by using True Image's Cloning feature (I was hoping that it would be able to compress the files enough), which failed. Not sure why, but when I attempted to set the path to the destination, it wouldn't accept that drive, nor any other location...maybe due to size requirements.



When I just formatted the 500GB drive, I selected the option to use file and folder compression. I wasn't certain if that was the thing to do, but I tossed a coin. Now, I'm wondering just how much it is able to compress a file...anyone know?

Hi,

I'm not sure if the file and folder compression will give that much more compression capability, but I don't know much about that option.

If you can't manage to get true image to work, perhaps you might consider GFI - its free but requires a registration. I use these for my backups and it also has in-built ZIP compression capability - I have shown a screen image below. It will also backup to other external/internal drives.

Good luck, and let us know how you go with that,
Golden

I don't think that most movie formats lend themselves to much lossless compression.

+1

they're very highly compressed already.

the good news is that hard drives are amazingly cheap these days.

The hard drive that I would want to buy, is another of the same model that I have gotten 3 lemons in a row on, and it was not cheap. Does any of your cheap 1 TB drives have SATA III and a 64MB cache?

The question is not about how well that the files would play from a compressed state, because it would only be a temporary means of storage. After getting an RMA, the files would be returned to their previous condition...that is assuming that they could?

why do you need sata iii and a big cache if you're just storing movies on them?

The problem is whether they would compress enough to fit on the temporary drive without loss of quality. The normal archive formats such as zip and lzh are all lossless compression methods which would extract to the original quality. These types of archive hardly compress videos at all. The only way you can really make a video smaller is to reduce its quality. Once you have done that you can't get it back again.

mickey megabyte,

Nothing is written in stone. The fact that I have movies on one of them now, doesn't mean that will always be true. Also, I might be wrong, but I thought that if I connected these drives to a SATA III motherboard, or to a SATA III controller card, that it might speed up encoding time. In any case, I don't see the point in buying older technology, when it is being replaced by newer.

I understand what you are saying, when it comes to the manner in which a video is originally wrapped. But I'm not talking about changing their original state, and not about using a zipper, but a compression method that is external to the files, such as I mentioned in formatting the drive, which is used by the OS, or a backup method used by something like True Image, which would also be external to the files. It is possible that neither of these methods would compress the files at all, if that is the case, then that is the answer to my question. If they would compress the files...as a group, rather than individually, would not the original quality be retained, after removing them from their compressed environment?