GratefulDean
New Member
After enduring the black screen and mouse pointer of death all morning with 4 system restores I have decided to go ahead with a back up/restore program (Acronis) outside of what came with the laptop (backup the backup). Presently I have several gigs of stuff I don't use but don't want to delete so would like to compress on one of my external drives.
My goal is to, after packing my old stuff on my 125g Maxtor I'd like to create one image of the entire laptop drive, programs, files etc, then back up the My Documents folder and pics as they are changed on my 1T WD Book.
Herein lies the rub, I have downloaded 7Zip and have begun compressing some files. It was a crap shoot due to my having zero knowledge of what each of the settings mean and how to set them to get the most out of the 2 hrs it takes to do the compression. Dictionary size? Solid block size? Number of CPU threads? Word size? I went ahead with what they recommended (normal) but was not seeming to save any space so I stopped and tried Ultra. I understand this is a powerful piece of software but where can I find information on all this. I have searched this forum and the 7Zip forum (which is a post-apocalyptic waste land of unanswered posts), Google presented nothing. (When I searched for 'what is "solid block size"' I found "solid block size dictates the size of your solid block" LOL)
I have a 125G drive that I would like to stuff with archived, super compressed files so that my new 1T drive can be used for accessible files like music, photos and as the backup/restore drive for my 320G laptop.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Dean
I am going to go ahead and use the Vista compression on the drive but would love some direction on where to cull the knowledge necessary to use 7Zip to its fullest.
Sorry for rambling, this post was started over an hour ago
My goal is to, after packing my old stuff on my 125g Maxtor I'd like to create one image of the entire laptop drive, programs, files etc, then back up the My Documents folder and pics as they are changed on my 1T WD Book.
Herein lies the rub, I have downloaded 7Zip and have begun compressing some files. It was a crap shoot due to my having zero knowledge of what each of the settings mean and how to set them to get the most out of the 2 hrs it takes to do the compression. Dictionary size? Solid block size? Number of CPU threads? Word size? I went ahead with what they recommended (normal) but was not seeming to save any space so I stopped and tried Ultra. I understand this is a powerful piece of software but where can I find information on all this. I have searched this forum and the 7Zip forum (which is a post-apocalyptic waste land of unanswered posts), Google presented nothing. (When I searched for 'what is "solid block size"' I found "solid block size dictates the size of your solid block" LOL)
I have a 125G drive that I would like to stuff with archived, super compressed files so that my new 1T drive can be used for accessible files like music, photos and as the backup/restore drive for my 320G laptop.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Dean
I am going to go ahead and use the Vista compression on the drive but would love some direction on where to cull the knowledge necessary to use 7Zip to its fullest.
Sorry for rambling, this post was started over an hour ago

My Computer
System One
-
- Manufacturer/Model
- HP Pavillion dv3510nr
- CPU
- Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P7350 @ 2.00GHz, 2
- Memory
- 4G
- Graphics card(s)
- NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS
- Monitor(s) Displays
- SynchMaster2300sw
- Screen Resolution
- 1280x800x60hz
- Hard Drives
- WD MyBookHome 1T external
- Internet Speed
- Fast yo