Compression for Storage / Backup

simpleethat

So I'm getting near to completion of scraping all my systems and while I will have everything backed up to my NAS I shouldn't need to access it all that regularly. I've been using 7zip to create archives for ages and like the amount of compression it can perform. My question is this: Would 7zip be the best solution for compressing my various system folders (with ROMs, images, videos, gamelist etc)? I'd prefer to not have to purchase any software currently but would be will to do so in the future.

wmarcio

@simpleethat i sugest you to use win32disk image, do backup from sdcard and you can restore all configs, romsets, scraped images to another one, or a bigger One...

simpleethat

@wmarcio I do backups of my SD card with win32disk before I make any changes. I store all my ROMs, cfgs, BIOSes, etc on an External HD, I'd like to compress the folder for each system (that contains all of the ROMs, boxart, gamelists, videosnaps, etc) and drop those onto my NAS to have in the event of drive failure. I really just want to know if there is something that I can use for better compression that 7zip.

wmarcio

@simpleethat
A few years ago, there was software called UHARC, doing a search on the internet, it's free. I see this program compress 1.5 GB in less than 170Mb. do not know if it still works, the software was from the early 2000s.
lol I'm getting old...

mitu

@simpleethat 7Zip is one the best - in terms of compression space, so you can't go wrong with it.

simpleethat

Thanks, @mitu & @wmarcio ! Going to stick with 7zip.

ericbsmith42

@simpleethat You aren't going to get much compression on jpg or mp4 files; those files are already compressed,and compression programs usually have trouble squeezing much more out of already compressed files. RetroPie already supports roms in zip and sometimes 7-z format, so you can have them compressed on the pi and might as well leave them in that format your NAS. The text/xml/cfg files are highly compressible, but take up only a few megabytes of space.

It's basically not worth compressing everything if you already have the roms in zip or 7z format.

simpleethat

@ericbsmith42 ROMs aren't compressed on my HDD that's attached to the pi.

ericbsmith42

@simpleethat Well, my suggestion is to compress all of your roms into zip or 7z format (as the emulators support) for use on your Pi and to just store them in that format on your NAS. This way they are maximally usable on your Pi should you need to copy them back over.

The amount of extra compression you can get by compressing everything into giant 7z files is fairly small in most cases. There are some roms that can't really be compressed for use by emulators, mostly bin and ISOs. However, most of the emulators also support a compressed format for these types of file (chd, pbp, etc). All the time, effort, and electricity you spend compressing files to eek out a few GB of storage space just isn't worth it.