The best compression application I've ever used

mercurial

mercurial

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So I found myself sitting with NFS Shift, sitting conveniently at over 5GBs, which as you know, will require a DL disc to copy to. I thought that if I could ZIP/RAR it, then I could try and fit it onto a normal DVD. I started with WinZip and as usual, found it to be pretty damn pathetic in its compression attempts. I then tried WinRAR, thinking that I would get more out of it. Nope, wrong again. I then tried 7-zip and I must say, it really pleasantly surprised me. It managed to ZIP it to around 4.6GBs, but as you know, this is still not enough. Anyway. So I was told about this application last weekend, called Uharc and apparently it's "the best compression program". So I thought, "what the heck", I have nothing to lose. I added the files for the archive and it said there are 22 minutes remaining. To my utter disbelief and amazement, it managed to compress the 5GB+ files to, get this, 1.3GB :eek: I selected the option to compress at it's highest.
I have never, ever seen such compression. This is an amazing piece of software. It's freeware as well. I would really recommend anyone to use this if you need serious compression.

Download link
 
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Just be sure to uncompress it again to make sure that there was no data loss.
 
I ran a quick test now, does seem to give better compression then WinRAR, although a bid slower...
 
Yep -Uharc has been on the net a while now, and free. I normally use WinUHA.
 
For the compression it does, it will definitely be slower than your usual compression apps, but it does what we need it to, whereas the other apps can't. I think decompressing will take long as well, but again, it does the job. I really don't care how long it takes, as long as it compresses the way it does.
 
nice. always good to know this.
i wonder why it hasn't taken off with torrents?
surely it's much easier to download software of 10mb once off than an additional 100's of mb of data ongoingly...
 
mercurial said:
So I found myself sitting with NFS Shift, sitting conveniently at over 5GBs, which as you know, will require a DL disc to copy to. I thought that if I could ZIP/RAR it, then I could try and fit it onto a normal DVD. I started with WinZip and as usual, found it to be pretty damn pathetic in its compression attempts. I then tried WinRAR, thinking that I would get more out of it. Nope, wrong again. I then tried 7-zip and I must say, it really pleasantly surprised me. It managed to ZIP it to around 4.6GBs, but as you know, this is still not enough.
Click to expand...

Did you use the 7z file format in 7-zip and the Maximum/Ultra compression mode?
 
great compression so far.... compressed a 4.3 mb mp3 to 3.7 mbs!
i know its not ALOT but music is already compressed so this is impressive.

Also tried compressing a batch of installation files . compressed from 60 > 34 megs!
Compression software should be getting used heavily especially for us bandwidth crazy South Africans :D
 
Positively Negative said:
great compression so far.... compressed a 4.3 mb mp3 to 3.7 mbs!
i know its not ALOT but music is already compressed so this is impressive.

Also tried compressing a batch of installation files . compressed from 60 > 34 megs!
Compression software should be getting used heavily especially for us bandwidth crazy South Africans :D
Click to expand...

Remember to choose the option that lets you choose the highest compression.
 
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