Any file compression format better than zip/rar/7z?

[DarkEnergy]

I don't usually compress files but as I'm running out of hard drive space, I'm looking into it. I usually use 7zip to compress and archive a folder into zip. Then I thought, what is better at compressing than zip? Rar; what is better than rar, 7z. Yet all of these were invented decades ago (but are being updated of course). Shouldn't there be a compression/archival file type far better than these? If so what is it? I don't care if I have to use a command line to use it, as long as it's simple and can run on Windows and maybe linux. 

[Mark77]

Bzip2 seems to be popular for distributing Linux software these days.  But seriously, get a bigger HDD if you're running into these issues. 

[mrchow19910319]

Or upload any small files (photos, documents and etc) to the cloud. Google drive or something. 

Only keep the video files on your hard drive. 

[SnowyMus]

Asking which one is best isn't really the right question, as each one has their own uses.

 

If you want the absolute lowest compression ratio, then yeah, you could use .7z. I'm assuming this is what you're talking about. This is available in a tool called p7zip.

 

However, if you want the fastest compression speed, .gz and .zip can be much faster than .7z but still deliver decent ratios which can also make them great for compressing stuff where as little latency as possible matters. They're also very widely used on many different operating systems, and at least one of them probably comes with your operating system.

[Atmos]

You can only compress your data down into so many 0s and 1s. Lossless compression has its limits,

however there are formats that will compress certain files even further, but you lose data, literally degrading the original file, which in many cases, renders it entirely useless.

 

Unless there's a pivotal change in the way computers handle information, that's not going to change, ever. We still use the old formats of compression because they are simply the best we still have, and we don't have some kind of magical lossless compression tool yet, because it's exactly that; Magical. You can't just wish away your data's 1s and 0s, it can only be compressed so far.

 

If you're running out of space, invest in another hdd, or an external drive of sorts to archive files away on.