Fair Backup

Using backup files compression is the only way to reduce the disk space, required for your backups. As nowadays, the amounts for backups are increasing drastically, backup files compression is as useful as never before.

Do I need to compress my backup files?

If your backup files are small enough, you can save your time and backup without compression. Another variant when you do not need backup compression is when you need your files to be accessible right from the backup medium - when you need to read files from a CD or DVD, for instance.

What to compress?

Some file types allow greater size decrease after compression than others. The best compressible files are plain text files - they can be compressed by 95%. Then go any other text files at a gradual scale, with image files being the least compressible - they can only be compressed by 5% or so. So if you backup a large set of text files, and you do not need to read them right from your backup media, backup compression is your best choice.

How to compress?

Most backup programs have built-in compression mechanism. They usually compress your files using the Zip format, either with the 2Gb file size limit (older programs), or without it - using Zip64, for instance. Most programs usually allow choosing a compression level, the difference between the lowest and the highest being about 50% - the less the compression, the less it takes time to compress. However, as mostly backup compression is used to save disk space, the highest compression level is most preferrable.