Fitting 2TB data on 500GB hard drive for backup?

[Binky]

You're wrong
/you

The OP is asking about a 2TB drive that will fill up more in the future, and it already has 750GB of mostly uncompressible data. No, trying to archive this to a 500GB drive is just stupid. I'm not wrong. There is no justifiable reason for trying this.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Try raring it.... heheh man I doubt it tho. its not going to happen. You need a 1TB if you wanna put that large image on it.... and Hitachi drives blow goat if anyone has had one they brake easily. Got very negative comments towards it, I read, just fyi,,, thx gl

*shrugs* With the exception of the real Deathstar (60GXP), I've been using Hitachis without problems for the last couple of years (not exclusively of course - have lots of WD and older Seagates, which I'm happy with as well).

Still have a bunch of the industry's first 1TBs (the 7K1000) trucking along 24/7/365.

 

[icanhascpu2]

The OP is asking about a 2TB drive that will fill up more in the future, and it already has 750GB of mostly uncompressible data. No, trying to archive this to a 500GB drive is just stupid. I'm not wrong. There is no justifiable reason for trying this.

Justifiable reason? Have you been watching a lot of Law and Order? This is data compression, not arresting the pregnant girl that killed her abusive boyfriend in self defense.

Also youre assuming. He said exactly how much he wanted to compress. Why are people eating crazy pills around here? No matter! I think the OP ran away in terror.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

It is records of hd backups, pics in JPG, movies in divx, and pdf's galore.

Can't be done. Depending on the type, if it were all pdfs you could probably manage it. But videos are nigh on incompressible, and jpgs are already compressed anyway. Plus, you're going to be adding more to it, I assume. Better just to get yourself a new hard drive.

 

[Binky]

Justifiable reason? Have you been watching a lot of Law and Order? This is data compression, not arresting the pregnant girl that killed her abusive boyfriend in self defense.

Also youre assuming. He said exactly how much he wanted to compress. Why are people eating crazy pills around here? No matter! I think the OP ran away in terror.

Read post #14 and stop posting nonsense. It's impossible.

 

[icanhascpu2]

Read post #14 and stop posting nonsense. It's impossible.

Read post #22. Simply because you do not understand, or you're ignorant, doesn't mean it is nonsense nor impossible. The difference here is practicality, not impossibility, do you understand the difference between the two?

Can he do this through a certain process?: YES
Should he do that lengthy process?: NO

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Step 1) Delete the bad porn and torrented B movies you won't watch again. (I mean, yes, boobies, but how many times can you sit through Lifeforce, really?

Step 2) Save to 250GB drive.

 

[imagoon]

Step 1) Delete the bad porn and torrented B movies you won't watch again. (I mean, yes, boobies, but how many times can you sit through Lifeforce, really?

Step 2) Save to 512MB Flash drive.

Fixed.

 

[imagoon]

Read post #22. Simply because you do not understand, or you're ignorant, doesn't mean it is nonsense nor impossible. The difference here is practicality, not impossibility, do you understand the difference between the two?

Can he do this through a certain process?: YES
Should he do that lengthy process?: NO

Yes, you are right. He can just transcode all his jpgs to 16x16 pixels and all HD movies to 192x108 pixels. That would shrink the data a ton.

A backup however is lossless so that isn't a valid approach nor is it practical. It is nonsense because a) the OP already is going to buy another drive b) he wanted a backup not to completely transcode everything he owns.

 

[exdeath]

You do not seem to understand how compression works very well

LOL I'm a programmer, I've implemented common compression algorithms. Do you even know what a Huffman tree or DCT quantization matrix is?

Only point I was making is that for anyone to have that large a quantity of data it can already be assumed that the majority of the data is media files. Nothing else requires that kind of space. Anything over a couple hundred MB for the majority of people can be assumed to be media files which don't compress well or at all.

Transcoding those files to lower bit rates is not compression. It's transcoding and lowering bit rates. I can get a 2 MB Word document to fit on a 1.44MB floppy if I delete every 4th line too.

Ironically .docx, .xlsx, etc files are zip file containers so you could make the case that simple documents can't even be compressed anymore either because they already are. Likewise PDF uses compression, or already contains lots of JPEG encoded data and images, program installation packages are decently compressed, partition backups have varying levels of compression, MP3, JPG, DIVX, WMV, AVI, etc all go without saying.

Half the time I zip/rar anything anymore is to consolidate thousands of small files into a single large file for storage device performance. I don't need to rar my partition backups when I've already selected the best slowest method in Acronis, to give just one example.

 

[icanhascpu2]

Yes, you are right. He can just transcode all his jpgs to 16x16 pixels and all HD movies to 192x108 pixels. That would shrink the data a ton.

A backup however is lossless so that isn't a valid approach nor is it practical. It is nonsense because a) the OP already is going to buy another drive b) he wanted a backup not to completely transcode everything he owns.

Lowering the resolution would be silly extreme and lower the SnR to a clearly perceptual level when compared. Thats foolish and not how it would be done obviously. The backup itself being 'lossless' has nothing to do with the content being lossy, lossless compressed or otherwise beforehand. It not nonsense, I already said he should just buy another drive, but saying it impossible *is* nonsense. Please reread what I said if you think I suggested he "transcode everything he owns".

LOL I'm a programmer,

LOL can I get your autograph.

I've implemented common compression algorithms. Do you even know what a Huffman tree or DCT quantization matrix is?

Have some snark back: Do you know what the alphabet is? You string these letters together and make words. They then make sentences. You read them and comprehend them.

What he wants to do is not impossible. However due to the content he has in storage, it would take much longer than is practically reasonable to preform better lossy compression techniques on all his media. Impossible: no. Should he do it that way: no.

The rest of what you said is irrelevant to this point (even though it was fine and sensible), you're on a different page than the point I was making; impossibility vs. practicality. Cranking up Acronis to max is not what Im talking about.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Lowering the resolution would be silly extreme and lower the SnR to a clearly perceptual level when compared. Thats foolish and not how it would be done obviously. The backup itself being 'lossless' has nothing to do with the content being lossy, lossless compressed or otherwise beforehand. It not nonsense, I already said he should just buy another drive, but saying it impossible *is* nonsense. Please reread what I said if you think I suggested he "transcode everything he owns".




LOL can I get your autograph.



Have some snark back: Do you know what the alphabet is? You string these letters together and make words. They then make sentences. You read them and comprehend them.

What he wants to do is not impossible. However due to the content he has in storage, it would take much longer than is practically reasonable to preform better lossy compression techniques on all his media. Impossible: no. Should he do it that way: no.

The rest of what you said is irrelevant to this point (even though it was fine and sensible), you're on a different page than the point I was making; impossibility vs. practicality. Cranking up Acronis to max is not what Im talking about.

Lossy data compression is not backup.

 

[DominionSeraph]

If someone personally walked up to me asking if they can compress 6 TB of data I will automatically reply no

...and then you would tell them to put it on a SSD.