To zip or not

[tdc]

Hi
I have a lot of photos stored on my external hard drive and DVDs for security.
However i still keep a large number on my laptop.
Would it be a good idea to zip these files to reduce the space they take up on the hard drive.
If it is a good idea what might be the best Zip to use eg. winzip ect.
Thanks.

 

[floppybootstomp]

It probably wouldn't be worth it imo, zipping stuff up doesn't generally reduce file size by much plus you'd have the added bother of having to unzip files each time you wanted to view or access. Better to buy a bigger external drive, consider a SATA dock and bare bones OEM SATA drive, cheaper than ready made enclosures.

But if you insist I've found 7-Zip, a freebie, to be good Link>> http://www.7-zip.org/

 

[Ian]

How big is your hard drive and how much free space do you have left? If you don't need the free space, there's not much to be gained from zipping the photos (but it will make it harder/slower to view them).

As JPG files are already compressed, you may not get much of a reduction in size anyway. As an example, I just compressed a 4MB photo using standard ZIP compression and I saved about 1% of the filesize.

 

[tdc]

Thanks for the info.
It seems clear that there is little to be gained by zipping the files.
Thanks again.