odeek9 wrote:
Anyway, I've used a PC for a few years now and have never zipped
files. I only am using 4% of my hard drive space (200gb drive) but
would like to compress some files. Mostly as a learning exercise.
What do I zip? If I have Corel WordPerfect on my desktop but rarely
use it should I zip that & of 300+ mbs how much space would I save.
Also should I zip most programs that I never use but will be
necessary at some future date? As Always-Thanks
No, I would never zip programs. If you don't use them, and want the disk
space they take, uininstall them. If you want them later, reinstall them
then.
In my view the main reasons for zipping something are the following:
1. to make it smaller for transmission over an internet connection, or
E-mail, or to fit onto a portable medium, like a diskette.
2. To create a single zip file that contains several files, for example all
the components of a program. This too is useful when you want to transmit
the package of files over the internet, or by E-mail.
3. You can password protect a zipped file.
4. You can use zipping to fit a file too large for a single diskette onto
several "spanned" diskettes.
Other than those, I can't think of any other good reasons to zip anything. I
don't think saving space on the hard drive is generally a good thing to do
by zipping, since it's it's easier to use Windows's feature of compressing
unused files.. Besides, if you're that short of space on the hard drive that
you need to zip things, zipping is just a stopgap measure; what you really
need is a bigger (or another) hard drive.
Zipping is extremely easy, and requires very little "learning exercise."
Doing it once is sufficient to learn how to do it. If you just want the
practice, zip any file, then delete the zipped file. There's no reason to
keep it instead of the individual files it contains if you're only using 4%
of your drive.
How much space you save when you zip a file depends on the file. Some files,
for example text files, compress a lot. At the other extreme are files like
jpg files which are already compressed and zipping doesn't save anything (a
zipped jpg file may even be a little bigger, because you incur the overhead
of zipping, but achieve no compression). Most files are somewhere in
between, but exactly where in between, again, depends on the file.
