Best software to compress a large game folder

A&P211 · Jul 3, 2023

I have a 3tb backup game folder that I wanted to compress.
What's a good way to compress it, or what software to use to compress. I want to compress it as much as possible.

ShiBDiB · Jul 3, 2023

7zip has always been my goto.

3TB of games tho sounds more like a hoarding issue than a need for compression lol.

A&P211 · Jul 3, 2023

ShiBDiB said:
7zip has always been my goto.

3TB of games tho sounds more like a hoarding issue than a need for compression lol.

its a back up folder

Bill_Bright · Jul 3, 2023

A&P211 said:
I have a 3tb backup game folder that I wanted to compress.

Why?

Compression comes with a whole series of potential problems. This includes corruption during compression, corruption during decompression, missing data, bugs in the compression software, the developer going out of business and more.

Programming techniques in recent years, and the fact most games and other programs are downloaded, has resulted in most programs utilizing space pretty efficiently already. Yes, some compression is still achievable. But it is not like you are going to get back 1.5TB of space from your 3TB of games.

I say, hard drives are cheap. So buy another hard drive (or 2!) and make another backup up copy. Besides, any 1/2 way decent backup program MUST include multiple backup copies with, preferably, at least one copy stored offsite.

mclaren85 · Jul 3, 2023

Try UHARC

UHARC CMD

QuietBob · Jul 3, 2023

Rather than creating one ginormous archive, I'd suggest compressing every game folder separately. That way you won't have to process terabytes of data if you decide to add something to it, or extract a single game/file. I use 7-zip with maximum compression settings for this purpose:

Compression level: 9 - ultra
Compression method: LZMA2
Word size: 273
Solid block size: solid
Dictionary size: the largest allowed by RAM

Or, as has been said, you could get an external HDD for archival purposes. Or do both.

ShiBDiB · Jul 3, 2023

A&P211 said:
its a back up folder

A backup of what tho? In 2023 there's no reason to locally back up most game installs unless you're going to live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.. even then starlink is a thing.

LabRat 891 · Jul 3, 2023

ShiBDiB said:
A backup of what tho? In 2023 there's no reason to locally back up most game installs unless you're going to live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.. even then starlink is a thing.

Point.
Why archive what you don't own, right?

mclaren85 · Jul 3, 2023

ShiBDiB said:
A backup of what tho? In 2023 there's no reason to locally back up most game installs unless you're going to live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.. even then starlink is a thing.

I still back up Games, movies, and mp3's locally.
And I still use torrent and limewire

LabRat 891 · Jul 3, 2023

mclaren85 said:
I still back up Games, movies, and mp3's locally.
And I still use torrent and limewire

*nudge*
For Linux distros, and open-source media, of course...

mclaren85 · Jul 3, 2023

LabRat 891 said:
For Linux distros, and open-source media, of course...

I love pirating

unwind-protect · Jul 3, 2023

Use a filesystem with transparent compression.

LabRat 891 · Jul 3, 2023

mclaren85 said:
I love pirating

Good way to get reprimanded or banned in most 'westerner' forums, FYI.

The way our laws often work, if the admin doesn't, the site could be held liable.

mclaren85 · Jul 3, 2023

LabRat 891 said:
Good way to get reprimanded or banned in most 'westerner' forums, FYI.

The way our laws often work, if the admin doesn't, the site could be held liable.

At least I'm honest.

But I never encourage anyone doing the same thing as I do.

evernessince · Jul 3, 2023

ShiBDiB said:
A backup of what tho? In 2023 there's no reason to locally back up most game installs unless you're going to live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.. even then starlink is a thing.

Services go down, the internet goes down. Some people just want to be able to play their games without a launcher or always having to be online.

Mind you 3TB is not a huge amount of games to backup depending on the game. I have a completely full 4TB SSD with my games and that's considering that 80% of them aren't installed to save space. Just a single COD game will set you back 200 GB.

A&P211 · Jul 4, 2023

ShiBDiB said:
A backup of what tho? In 2023 there's no reason to locally back up most game installs unless you're going to live in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.. even then starlink is a thing.

Its a games folder.

R0H1T · Jul 4, 2023

Get rar & use 5 percent or more for recovery record.

How Does the Recovery Record Feature Work?

WinRAR - the data compression, encryption and archiving tool for Windows that opens RAR and ZIP files. Compatible with many other file formats.

www.win-rar.com

claes · Jul 4, 2023

A&P211 said:
Its a games folder.

Of content that’s available to download?

Another thing to note is that most games are already compressed. I truly don’t understand why anyone would backup their games unless they own them. Even then, the answer is the same as always — the 3-2-1 method.

Mussels · Jul 4, 2023

A&P211 said:
I have a 3tb backup game folder that I wanted to compress.
What's a good way to compress it, or what software to use to compress. I want to compress it as much as possible.

Game files are usually compressed already and can't be compressed much further
To uncompress them requires the full amount of free space as well - so if its 100GB uncompressed and 80GB compressed, you'd need the 80GB compressed file and 100GB free space to decompress

Also, game files usually can't be played directly if restored that way and the installers are already compressed - what are you aiming for here?

claes said:
Of content that’s available to download?

Another thing to note is that most games are already compressed. I truly don’t understand why anyone would backup their games unless they own them. Even then, the answer is the same as always — the 3-2-1 method.

Stuff like steam with the library files being 'portable' made a copy useful (which is not the same as a backup, since you do not compress anything) - classically installed games don't really work this way since without a clean install, you lack the required redistributables to launch the game as well as neccesary registry files, so after spending a lot of time finding all the missing .dll files and getting the game to finally launch on that one OS, they wont be updateable or anything

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Best software to compress a large game folder

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