Best File Compression Software?

[Paddy]

I've been using WinRAR for as long as I can remember, because when I checked up on it at the time it was the best tool available as far as compression was concerned. Is this still the case? Is there now an alternative that can squash files into even smaller states than .rar files can? I'm personally not bothered about loads of features in these types of programs, all I want to do is make files as small as possible. Any suggestions, or should I just stick with WinRAR for now?

Thanks for your time and opinions ;)

[alc6379]

Rar is nice, but my favorite is bzip2. I use it in UNIX/Linux, and it's great when combined with tar archives. It's kind of like gzip-- it only works with one file at a time, which is why you'd put all the files you'd want in a tar archive, and then use bzip on it.

[Dani]

I am a fan of StuffIt by Aladdin Systems.

[Catweazle]

You've not mentioned which Windows version, but for Windows XP I use the OS itself for Zip files, and WinRAR for all other archive types. Works for me, and it's a pretty clean way to deal with things.

Moved to the 'Windows Software' section, by the way.

[frrossk]

For best compression rates use WinUHA, free software, dld from www.winuha.com ; beats zip, rar, etc. But it's going a little slower than the rest.

[Paddy]

Thanks a lot guys, I'll try all of this stuff and see which I prefer :)

Sorry for puting this in the wrong forum lol That's not like me at all!

Thanks a lot :D

[cleanlava]

Magic ISO........ITs good and easy

[nosound]

well i don't know the best but i use WinZip 9.0 and it works find with me. it makes zip files and unzipes them. it does the job. just go to download.com and look for programs like that.

[SeroSX]

I've seen some software cracking groups (*cough* MYTH *cough*) that use eHarc. It seems to work well. Personally, though, I use winRAR. It's fast and easy to use, although it doesn't shave much space off the size of the original file(s). If you need to make small compressions for putting a large file or large files onto a disk, winRAR can break up the selected files into small compressions like .r00 files. Then you can just extract all of these at the same time and it will put the pieces back together into what was originally archived. This is good for sharing stuff that is too big for a floppy disk, but too small to waste a CD on. Just compress it, save it to multiple floppies, then move 'em and unzip to the desired location.

Oh yeah, there is another file compresser that can make small .7z files, but I forget what it is called.

[frrossk]

Oh yeah, there is another file compresser that can make small .7z files, but I forget what it is called.

7zip :) Also, free. Dld at www.7-zip.org

[musleray]

Besides WinUha I recommend the CAB compression (in case of documents).

[GoreTex]

I recently downloaded a file that was a 7.19MB RAR file. When I decompressed it, it showed as being a BIN/CUE that totalled 1.18GB! :eek: Needless to say, I deleted it and decompressed it again, feeling that there was some error, or that I had read it wrong. But upon decompressing it a few more times, I came to realize that the information I was seeing was indeed correct. Does anyone have an explanation of how this is possible? I've been using WinRAR for years now, and I've NEVER been able to accomplish that percentage of compression. Is it possible that there is some god-like compression tool out there that bests every other compression tool by 65%+/-? Any information here would be appreciated.

[Sauce]

I could be wrong at this but i believe a bin file is a bit for bit reading of a selected meida for example cd or processors. My educated guess is that you were com/decompressing a cd image (bin/cue) that did not take up the entire disk so towards the end of the cd (or about 65-70%ish thru the disk it is all 0's because there is no data there.

For this reason alone is why i prefer the popular iso format instead of bin/cue. If you still have the file and get curious try converting it from bin/cue to iso formating using a program like UltraIso and see what the iso file size is.

As compression goes, rar files tend to be smaller then zip's and UHARC is a nice compression for people who want tight files but it is not very popular so dont plan on sharing them with your friends.

[elf_god2003]

:!::!:I like to think that I find the best software ever but I could be worng.
I would recommend giving "izarc" a try. http://www.izarc.org
[[b]Email address Removed[/b]] let me know what you think.:!::!:

[HodonKain]

I've been dealing with file compression for many many years.
I've found that Winzip is pretty well rounded.
7zip is very nice as well. Those are the main two I use.

If you want even better file compression at the cost of speed, you could
try PAQ8. I'm in the process of developing my own program.
Fun stuff.

[DimaYasny]

been using rar since forever, especially for the command line, in scripts during windows backup. some MVPs I know say 7zip is a better archiver, but it is sometimes a bit buggy. I'm archiving terrabytes of info at times, and I prefer to spend another tape, but to be certain my data is safe

[HodonKain]

Staying on the topic of file compression...
If you're backing up terrabytes of data, maybe data deduplication
would be better for you. I don't want to pretend to know everything
but that might help you out more than WinRar. WinRar is an excellent
program though. ;)

Avamar Axion seems to be a good nonredundant data deduplication
program but I've never tried it.
http://www.avamar.com/products2.asp

[DimaYasny]

maybe :) actually the heavy archiving is done by BackupExec right on the tapes, rar is for all the dedicated servers running maybe a dozen gigs here and half a tb there

[HodonKain]

This explains a little about Avamar's backup product.
If you plan on backing up several hundred gigabytes then this might be your solution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc52OxvDG7k

As far as the PAQ Compression program, it is free and it can compress even jpeg images
and JP2 images which are said to already be compressed. The PAQ Comrpession
is a lossless compression (which is good). Works better than any know compression
technique but it's slow and requires more memory. For me, I don't mind the wait.

Just drag and drop the file (the one you want to compress) onto the paq806.exe and
it does all the work.

http://cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/compression/#paq
The latest version is paq8o6, released Sept. 28, 2007 by KZ.

Have a good one yaws!

[jbennet]

7zip. 7zip is the best

[dsy]

Imho what's the best compression software depends mainly from the user's goal... for backup or sharing data I would still use plain old zip (or tar+gz on Linux), without looking for the maximum compression or advanced features: the process just needs to be fast and the output to be readable from anyone.

If I'll need some more features and better compression, I'll go for Rar or 7-Zip; they are reasonably fast, they are great archiving format and are reasonably known by most users.

If I'll aim to pure compression, well, now the top performer is PAQ so I'll go to one of its GUI like:
KGBArchiver http://kgbarchiver.net/
PeaZip http://peazip.sourceforge.net/
PowerPaq http://sourceforge.net/projects/powerpaq

[jbennet]

yeah i like 7zip because it does .gz and .tar and ..bz2 etc.... so its good for web developers etc... as many opensource projects use those formats

[MidiMagic]

The best is none. You are trading use time for space.

[HodonKain]

True - Very true

[jbennet]

but its helpful for downloading. A zipped file can take a fraction of the time to download.

[Softix]

I still prefer winrar because WinRAR can create multiple-volume archives (popular with file sharers) and use 128-bit AES encryption to password-protect them. Like most of its competition, it also has an option to hide file names inside an encrypted archive: someone without the password won't even see what files you've archived, let alone view their contents.

[tynyro]

I've been using WinRAR for as long as I can remember, because when I checked up on it at the time it was the best tool available as far as compression was concerned. Is this still the case? Is there now an alternative that can squash files into even smaller states than .rar files can? I'm personally not bothered about loads of features in these types of programs, all I want to do is make files as small as possible. Any suggestions, or should I just stick with WinRAR for now?

Thanks for your time and opinions ;)

Try WinZip I am using it for some time and I am happy with it.

[HodonKain]

WinRAR is still kicking butt in the data compression world.
It's fast and very well-rounded. If you really want to squeeze out as much as you can, I'd install WinZip, WinRAR, and 7Zip then compress your data once with each one and see what one did the job the best. Sometimes the type of data dictates what program will work the best. :)

[Flame8]

there is a free program called 7zip, it's good too

[tech_geek]

Just saw this thread and thought I'd also suggest FILEminimizer Office - it compresses all MS Office files up to 98%. The cool thing about this is that it compresses the actual file, so there's nothing to extract. If anyone's interested, here's a link to download a free trial: http://www.filecart.com/details/42632/544/FILEminimizer_Office.php