[coolaid]

well, someone please tell me if i'm doing it wrong, my goal was to make a file as small as possible:



i use winrar to rar up a file, then i place it in an empty folder, then i rar it up again, again i place the rar file in an empty folder, then rar it up again.....



the file began to get smaller and smaller, i repeated the process a couple of times, but i can't help but think that this doesn't seem to be the proper way, so can someone tell me if what i was doing is correct and an effective way of shrinking down a file? will the file become damage and unextractable after too many times?



many thanks for theh help

[JohnWill]

Nope, that's not really a way to do this. While the first iteration of this technique results in a tiny reduction, that's where the "progress" stops. Here's a test of compressing a bunch of files, then compressing the compressed image over and over. Note the size doesn't keep decreasing.

The reason for the initial small decrease is the file names are not compressed in the initial archive, so you can actually get a small additional compression the first time, but it's not worth the effort.

Initial Compression: 3,858,903 PGMS.rar
Second Compression: 3,849,974 PGMS2.rar
Third Compression: 3,850,047 PGMS3.rar
Forth Compression: 3,850,120 PGMS4.rar

Bottom line? There is no effective way to keep compressing a compressed file, or there'd be a commercial application that did it.

[coolaid]

you're rigt, i shoud have realized that, i tried winrar,7zip,kgb, and in the end, my 50mb files gets shrink down to 49.8mb, and will go no futher.




i was so foolish to think that i could compress a file, but no wi understand, thank you for your help, thanks.

[JohnWill]

No problem.

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