Zip Files to SAVE STORAGE VOLUME ??

[techcuriosity]

Hi

My question here is whether or not I could save my storage data by just zipping huge files by creating zipped folder in Windows, no software download. Or zip files comes into play only when I attempt to send that data to someone, so that the data is being compressed thus enabling faster data upload ..

Also, perhabs there are better alternatives, softwares which could compress data significantly , and that way saving data volumes on storages like ssd's, which aren't yet so cheap..

[NelizMastr]

You can't use the data once you zip it, so unless you're just archiving data you won't have to use at all, I don't see a use case here.

[desertcomputer]

Don't brother unless you want to send files or for archive use. Plus you won't able to use file once zip.

[LogicalDrm]

Zipping doesn't actually compress files that much. It's good only if you need to move tons of single files at once.

[techcuriosity]

8 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

You can't use the data once you zip it, so unless you're just archiving data you won't have to use at all, I don't see a use case here.

I'm aware that I should unzip files in order to use them, but what if I want to archive data and decompress it for rare needs. Will windows itself could do the job to compress data by zipping files? Or once again, zip files only do their job when data is being send?

And let there be needs for archiving, what are apps that could save my space, despite that in order to use them I should first decompress (unzip)

 

[homeap5]

2 hours ago, techcuriosity said:

Hi

My question here is whether or not I could save my storage data by just zipping huge files by creating zipped folder in Windows, no software download. Or zip files comes into play only when I attempt to send that data to someone, so that the data is being compressed thus enabling faster data upload ..

Also, perhabs there are better alternatives, softwares which could compress data significantly , and that way saving data volumes on storages like ssd's, which aren't yet so cheap..

 

If you have desktop, then just buy another HDD. Most of motherboards have 6 sata connectors and hard drives are cheap. Also - power consumption is very low, so don't worry - you may connect 6 drives and still it will be barely noticable. So instead of made your files harder to use, just expand your storage space.

 

Many files are zipped very well, but most of files that people uses all the time, are already compressed almost to the max - mp3, jpeg, mkv, mp4, ogg, gif, png, flac - all of them are compressed so you cannot compress them more than 1-2%. All documents like docx, xlsx are in fact zip files, so they're already compressed.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

2 hours ago, techcuriosity said:

I'm aware that I should unzip files in order to use them, but what if I want to archive data and decompress it for rare needs. Will windows itself could do the job to compress data by zipping files? Or once again, zip files only do their job when data is being send?

Nothing special about sending them vs. archiving. You can zip/rar/etc files you don't regularly need just to save space, yes.

You can also enable "compress this drive" in Windows, but I haven't tested how much it does or what the performance impact is.

 

 

2 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

unless you're sending someone a ZIP bomb, you don't save much space when you compress regular files together

It largely depends on the type of files you are dealing with. If you are compressing JPGs, which are already compressed files, sure, there will barely be any difference in total size. If you are compressing TXTs, on the other hand, I can assure you that you may have billions of files and still compressing them will dramatically reduce their total size.