What is file compression?

Everybody compresses files. Whether compression be to send your documents over e-mail or you just have no space left on your hard disk drive. With all the types of file compression there are, how do you know which one is the best for the task you want to accomplish? Well, that is where this article comes in handy.

Types of file compression

Here are the list of file compressions I will be using in this article:

• 7-ZIP

• BZIP2

• GZIP

• RAR

• ZIP

• ACE

The official 7-ZIP 3.13 compressor was used for 7-ZIP.

The official BZIP2 1.02 compressor was used for BZIP2.

The official GZIP 1.24 compressor was used for GZIP.

WinRAR 3.42 was used for RAR.

WinZIP 9.0 used for ZIP.

WinACE 2.5 was used for ACE.

The Software

Although file size is the most important thing when compressing files, the software you use is somewhat important too. WinRAR does have a nice utility. It allows drag 'n dropping and a cool feature called file recovery. If part of your compressed file becomes corrupt, you can recover it from a recovery record that is stored in the RAR file. WinZIP and WinACE have this feature list too. 7-ZIP, BZIP2 and GZIP do not, but 7-ZIP does promise to add those features in a future version of 7-ZIP. You should take into account that the software that does have those features are commercial. 7-ZIP, BZIP2 and GZIP are all open-source, meaning they are given away for free. The program creators do all the coding in their spare time.

As of 7-ZIP 4.23, you now can drag and drop, and file recovery will be added.

File Compression Testing

I will now compress several different types of files. This will show which type of compression is best for what job. Please note that all that all file sizes are in bytes. The title will indicate what type of files I am compressing and the first bar will show you the uncompressed byte file size. I also made sure to use the ultimate compression settings in each program to get the best results.

PDF Compression

I took 66224128KBs of PDF files and they best compressed under 7-ZIP to shrink to a size of 59740160KBs at 9.7909451% compression.

WPD Compression

26087424KBs of many Word Perfect documents best compressed under 7-ZIP to a size of 2269184KBs at 91.3016172%. So for documents of both PDF and WPD type, 7-ZIP is the best.

Let's continue to see what file compression scored the highest in the other tests.

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