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Which Compression Format to Use for Archiving?

posted by martyb on Thursday September 12 2019, @07:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-depends dept.

canopic jug writes:

Web developer Ukiah Smith wrote a blog post about which compression format to use when archiving. Obviously the algorithm must be lossless but beyond that he sets some criteria and then evaluates how some of the more common methods line up.

After some brainstorming I have arrived with a set of criteria that I believe will help ensure my data is safe while using compression.

  • The compression tool must be opensource.
  • The compression format must be open.
  • The tool must be popular enough to be supported by the community.
  • Ideally there would be multiple implementations.
  • The format must be resilient to data loss.

Some formats I am looking at are zip, 7zip, rar, xz, bzip2, tar.

He closes by mentioning error correction. That has become more important than most acknowledge due to the large size of data files, the density of storage, and the propensity for bits to flip.

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  • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday September 12 2019, @10:42PM (1 child)

    by inertnet (4071) on Thursday September 12 2019, @10:42PM (#893396) Journal

    One other factor to consider is time to compress, as well as decompress. Some algorithms take long to compress but are fast to decompress, others may work the other way around.

    Personally I rarely use compression and I rotate backup media, so I always have at least 3 versions of files.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday September 13 2019, @06:17PM

    by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Friday September 13 2019, @06:17PM (#893782) Homepage
    One thing to remember is that the time to back up is the time to compress and decompress - if you don't decompress it, you don't know you have a backup. But yes, decompression is always quicker than compression, so it's itsy-bitsy.
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