Re: Hardpressed vs. Autoark

[jlee@clyde.ics.uci.edu (Orion Pax)]

Raymond D. McAnally shook the fabric of space and wrote:
: prices without resorting to compressing the disk and risking major data 
: crashes. If you buy used drives in good shape, the price is even lower. I 

Data compression has no effect on file integrity.  Your files will get
corrupted with/without help from your compression program.  It's just a
question of reliability.  Obviously, many programs have proven themselves
reliable such as Disk Doubler, StuffIt, gzip, Shrinkit, Zip, DoubleDisk,.
Stacker, etc.

: program that if the main file gets a glitch all the files are lost, 
: damaged or at the very least difficult to retrieve, I say get a bigger 
: drive. No loss in speed either.

What you might be referring to is group file compression with something like
Zip or something.  Autoark and Hardpressed compress on individual file basis
with file verification during compression, there is no possibility of one
file screwing up others.

If getting a bigger drive is that simple, why do online services still
compress archives when they can afford gigs of space?  It's not a question
of reliability, speed, or space; it's a question of efficiency of storage.

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