Things I wish I knew about 7-zip...
A free file archiver for extremely high compression
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I love the program and I use it all the time. That said, there are many things about it (or, I suppose, file compression in general) that I do not understand. Please, if you, with your mega knowledge of megabytes... can help this poor soul...
I would be most grateful.
Well, here we go:
1.) What sorts of files is 7zip most adept at compressing? Are certain image files preferred when it comes to amount of compression versus file size?(AKA: gif versus png versus jpeg, etc.)
2.) Is it more efficient to group similar files together when compressing or can I mismatch everything and get pretty much the same compression power? Like, if I wanted to compress a program which consists of image files, general files, etc. should I just compress it all as one or compress each individual type of files into an archive and then move on to another?
3.) If I'm compressing files with the highest word size/dictionary size/ultimate level compression/whatever does the computer decompressing it have to have the memory it took me to compress it? How does that work?
Thank you very much if you can help at all!
>What sorts of files is 7zip most adept at compressing?
Uncompressed binary (like program files), text (source code, logs, html), some uncompressed images.
7-zip isn't effective on photografic images or audio because lacks multimedia filters (but are planned).
For already compressed files (like gif, png, jpg, mp3, zip, installers) the compression ratio will be low.
>Is it more efficient to group similar files together when compressing
For 7z the files will be sorted automatically if you use solid mode.
Zip doesn't support solid compression, so the order don't affect compression ratio.
>does the computer decompressing it have to have the memory it took me to compress it?
If you are using the GUI check the "Memory usage for Decompressing".
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/3581/addwx8.png
If you are using the command line, read the -m switch
Ah, thanks a lot! My ignorance has weakened somewhat.