HeavenShallBurn
First Post
Depends on the type of file I've seen ranges from high 60s to low 90s but as an overall average in the 70-75% range. In general RAR files compress about 30% better than ZIPs.
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Anyone Use Portable External Harddrives? I Need Advice
- Thread starter Rl'Halsinor
- Start date
XCorvis
First Post
HeavenShallBurn said:
You realize music, videos and pdfs are already compressed, right? Are you getting decent compression on them with WinRAR? I can't imagine the amount of time it takes to compress 93 GB is worth it, especially with hard drive prices these days.
Also, doesn't compressing files make them more fragile? I know rar has some redundancy options, but are you using those features?
HeavenShallBurn
First Post
That was for a media back-ups, I do redundant back-ups. One un-compressed in an external HD. The second to media compressed to reduce the space it takes, and burning to double-sided DVDs that's still eleven discs, I do use the error protection features of WinRAR they're important for big archives. Also the music, video, and D&D folder sizes were pre-compression. Even with videos and mp3s I still get about 60 percent compression. The worst offenders compression wise are .pdfs and .tiffs, if either of those formats compress it's only an infinitessimal amount.
Like I said earlier I hope spintronics research pans out, solid-state disks with no moving parts and >1TB/in^2 of non-volatile memory would really make things easier.
EDIT: For compression I pick a few days when nothing major will be happening and just leave the main comp running compression unattended while I use the older backup to do any work. Takes just over 35 hours to compress the files.
Like I said earlier I hope spintronics research pans out, solid-state disks with no moving parts and >1TB/in^2 of non-volatile memory would really make things easier.
EDIT: For compression I pick a few days when nothing major will be happening and just leave the main comp running compression unattended while I use the older backup to do any work. Takes just over 35 hours to compress the files.
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No doubt solid state is the future. I think we'll start seeing more and more PCS with solid state for quick bootup/OS, but a second magnetic-disk for storage soon.
When will solid state completely take over magnetic media? Too soon to tell. My guess is at least 10 years.
When will solid state completely take over magnetic media? Too soon to tell. My guess is at least 10 years.
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Psionicist
Explorer
Corsair (and possibly other manufacturers as well) have recently released USB flash memories with 32 gigabytes of storage. I would suggest buying one of these for portability (moving data to and from different computers), then only use external hard drives for archiving. I would guess 90% of external hard drive failure stories are something like "worked fine then I moved it and now it doesn't work anymore", so a regular flash memory is a good complement.
For storage and archiving, I mostly use Western Digital MyBooks. They are inexpensive, passivly cooled and works alright.
Oh and I can really recommend Corsair Survivor. I only have the 8 gigabyte version but it's a really cool piece of a hardware. It's encased in a 2 millimeter aluminium cylinder, and it's the only storage medium I know of that will survive a good beating with a hammer. Not that that's something you normally do, but it's very nice to have a storage medium that you don't have to treat like nitroglycerin.
For storage and archiving, I mostly use Western Digital MyBooks. They are inexpensive, passivly cooled and works alright.
Oh and I can really recommend Corsair Survivor. I only have the 8 gigabyte version but it's a really cool piece of a hardware. It's encased in a 2 millimeter aluminium cylinder, and it's the only storage medium I know of that will survive a good beating with a hammer. Not that that's something you normally do, but it's very nice to have a storage medium that you don't have to treat like nitroglycerin.
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