So I decided that my DS roms finally needs a bit of a tidying up. Some of them were grabbed from sites that have gone while some have been packed according to scene release standards. The problem is that the external HDD is starting to run out of space to hold them so I thought it's about time to repack them to see if I can save space. My only question is, out of RAR, ZIP and 7Z, which format should I choose?
I would use RAR personally, but it's pretty much a preference thing. RAR deals better with data and transmission errors than ZIPs, but 7z has a slightly better compression rate than RAR WinRar can decompress them all, though.
Zip for 2 reasons: 1) NDScrc can repack all of your ROMS into a ZIP archive, taking out all the effort. Even renames the NDS and archive too. 2) Windows has built in support for opening ZIP files which is handy if you want to give them to a 'friend' I still use WinRar for handling ZIP files though.
I'm using .zip as the renamer I'm using compress in .zip but .7z is useful if you can pack them by clones (if you collect the same game from other regions too). Advanscene dat includes the duplicates flag, when used with Offlinelist 0.7.3b2, you can choose to compress with 7z + put duplicates in the same archive. zip will compress each files independently, and result in a big .zip (like if you had every games trimmed and uncompressed) 7z will compare every files included in the pack, and compress the difference only once. the resulted .7z filesize will be shorter than 1 uncompressed ROM. For example, if you collect all the released Roms, you will have 7 times Pokemon heartgold. you will save 6 times the place on your HDD !
.7Z for me. I prefer having the smallest possible files, because I really need all the space I can get on my hard drive (and yes, I have an external hard drive too, but it's always a hassle using it) Also, how come you have such a high postcount and I have never seen you before?
Not all all. Compressing them saves more space, and leaves the original ROM untouched. You can then trim the ROMS as you copy them to your MicroSD card. On average you might save ~20% from trimming, on average you will normally save ~50% from archiving.
Probably RAR as the archive format, because it's more ubiquitiously supported compared to 7z. I would however use 7zip to RAR those files, as WinRAR is a piece of shit.
you'd have to uncompress everything first to take benefit of clones in .7z. I doubt you will be able to get anything better than 1% compression rate if you take all your rars and zips and compress them in .7z. why not buy a bigger hard drive, how big could it possibly be? 120 gigs or so? that isn't a lot of space. 1tb hard drives are $50 these days.
Not at all, the more you put duplicates in the same archive file the more you gain place, as they compress at 100% (compressed size : 0byte). You gain more than 1% though, you are right, it will need space to convert zip or rar into 7z, but then he will be fine. He can start converting few files at a time instead of throwing its whole collection.
I have archived 4 * 7.4GB archives full of trimmed ROMS (backups of my Nieces'/ Nephew's/ Sister's MicroSD cards), each of which contains 200-230 ROMs. Even though the ROMs within are trimmed, the archives are all compressed down to 3.83GB - 3.98GB. Perhaps on an individual ROM which trims well it might come within 10%. But on average over quite a few ROMs, there's no way trimming comes within 10% of archiving.
Doesn't really matter. That's solid archiving, to extract a single ROM it will have to extract them all, or it can't build the complete file as the data will be distributed over several ROMs. Solid archiving sounds great in principle, but is a pain in the long run. If that archive corrupts, you've lost all your ROMs and it lakes so much longer to extract a single file. Unless they are backing up a MicroSD card, most people will archive each ROM into it's own individual archive. The differences in space between RAR, 7ZIP, and ZIP really aren't that much.
I use both Zip and Rar. If I want to compress a game. I rar that bitch. However if I have more than one image, file, document, and they're small size, then I zip them so I can send them over as a single file. Rar is useless with small files. If the difference beetween rar and zip is minimal, then I just choose zip. Because zip isn't compressed as much, it extracts faster, and like many pointed out, has built-in Win support so that I may send over small files to my less than retarded friends.
