Free file compactors?

[Arichards]

Does anyone know of any free archiving utilities... I want to back up files that are pretty big and I don't have a dvd-burner. Stuffit costs money and I was wondering if there was anything out there for free.


Thanks.

 

[cwa107]

Does anyone know of any free archiving utilities... I want to back up files that are pretty big and I don't have a dvd-burner. Stuffit costs money and I was wondering if there was anything out there for free.


Thanks.

I use the Disk Utility to create a compressed DMG file when I want to create an archive. There may be a better tool, but this serves my purposes usually.

 

[Benjamindaines]

Right click in Finder and click Create Archive. This will create a .zip file.

 

[Arichards]

Right click in Finder and click Create Archive. This will create a .zip file.

Cool, I'm glad to know that OS X integrates archiving like this. However, I have one other question. I tried archiving a large 4GB folder full of movies. The archive was only slightly smaller than the original folder. Am I doing something wrong?

 

[MacHeadCase]

I too find that Mac OS X's built-in .zip file compression changes only slightly the resulting file size so this thread has got me curious as well.

I did find 7zX 1.6 which, the app's author says, can do a better compression job.

I'll see if I can find more...

 

[Benjamindaines]

Cool, I'm glad to know that OS X integrates archiving like this. However, I have one other question. I tried archiving a large 4GB folder full of movies. The archive was only slightly smaller than the original folder. Am I doing something wrong?

Nahh, the Zip compression isn't all that much. It's mostly useful for sending a folder via email. If you want to compress something that large into something significantly smaller you will need to use a disk image like cwa107 said or buy another compressing application.

 

[cwa107]

Nahh, the Zip compression isn't all that much. It's mostly useful for sending a folder via email. If you want to compress something that large into something significantly smaller you will need to use a disk image like cwa107 said or buy another compressing application.

...also consider that some types of files, those that are inherently compressed (mpegs, mp3 files, jpegs, etc) will not get significantly smaller because compression is already built into the format (i.e. they are not "raw" data).