A file compression experiment

I wanted to make an archive backup of my Parallels Windows 10 virtual machine file. The file itself is 54.51 GB, and I used Keka, a compressor application for OSX available from the Mac’s App Store to compress using the ‘more compression’ setting on each of five different compression standards:

1. 7z – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7z

2. Zip – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_%28file_format%29

3. Tar – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_%28computing%29

4. GZip – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gzip

5. Bzip2 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bzip2

On each compression setting I used ‘Slowest, more compression’:

…and here are the results in descending file size (and thus ascending better compresssion) with the 7z method a clear winner:

Interesting stuff!

#compression #Zip #Gzip #Bzip2 #7z #Tar