which is better way to keep the data in WD 8TB Elements Desktop

owais16

Hello,

As a title which is better way to keep the video data in WD 8TB Elements Desktop RAR or as simple videos since i've lots of dramas need to keep in hard drive.

Thank you

shruub

Depends on how often you want to access them, but simple video files seem better for me (based on your usecase). Also, do your backups

bethp

There is a few factors, are you just wanting to store the files for long term in which case compress them so you can store more

If you want to be able to access them without the need to de-compress then store the straight files, there is an argument for both situations, personally I will compress anything that I have watched already and have a script that will tar the files and move to long-term storage.

CyberneticTitan

Videos are pretty much incompressible so I wouldn't bother creating archives of them.

If you want some resiliency against bitrot you can use RAR to store them without compression and add a recovery record, or just create PAR2 files. But even then a corrupted bit in a video file might just mean a bad pixel in one frame.

bethp

@CyberneticTitan said:
Videos are pretty much incompressible so I wouldn't bother creating archives of them.

If you want some resiliency against bitrot you can use RAR to store them without compression and add a recovery record, or just create PAR2 files. But even then a corrupted bit in a video file might just mean a bad pixel in one frame.

Excuse me? are you saying you can not zip/tar/rar a video file to make it smaller to store ....

COLBYLICIOUS

@shruub said:
Depends on how often you want to access them, but simple video files seem better for me (based on your usecase). Also, do your backups

Backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup to backup.

Mumbly

@bethp said:

@CyberneticTitan said:
Videos are pretty much incompressible so I wouldn't bother creating archives of them.

If you want some resiliency against bitrot you can use RAR to store them without compression and add a recovery record, or just create PAR2 files. But even then a corrupted bit in a video file might just mean a bad pixel in one frame.

Excuse me? are you saying you can not zip/tar/rar a video file to make it smaller to store ....

What he said. You can zip/tar/rar video file, but gain, if any at all, isn't worth to mention. His (avi, mkv, mpeg...) videos are already compressed.

@owais16 you won't gain anything with RAR. Your "dramas" are already compressed.

bethp

I mean, imo I am storing around 3TB of compressed videos and I can personally say that compressing them is worth it ..... if you are only storing like 500G of stuff sure may as well keep the files as is, but this is a external HDD we are talking about so anything will help and as its 8TB you could fill that up very fast where as at least compressing your files you will save some space and be able to store more

totally_not_banned

If anything you should be using lrzip OP.

Mumbly

@bethp said: I mean, imo I am storing around 3TB of compressed videos and I can personally say that compressing them is worth it

No, it's not. You're talking out of your ass. "Dramas" he downloaded are already heavily compressed. Gain, if any at all, would be negligible. Videos aren't documents.

bethp

How do you know they are heavily compressed? that was never mentioned, I would imagine that compressing 8tb of raw video would save you at least enough to make it worth so .....

Mumbly

@bethp said: How do you know they are heavily compressed?

Because I read? What raw videos?

@owais16 said: since i've lots of dramas need to keep in hard drive

Additional RAR compression of downloaded movies and dramas would be close to 1:1 size ratio.

Winrar uses lossless compression which will only compress based on the entropy of the data. A video file is very likely high entropy, especially if it is already compressed (for example mpeg files). Winrar will not be able to reduce the size of video files.

CyberneticTitan

@bethp said:

@CyberneticTitan said:
Videos are pretty much incompressible so I wouldn't bother creating archives of them.

If you want some resiliency against bitrot you can use RAR to store them without compression and add a recovery record, or just create PAR2 files. But even then a corrupted bit in a video file might just mean a bad pixel in one frame.

Excuse me? are you saying you can not zip/tar/rar a video file to make it smaller to store ....

~ % rar a -m5 out.rar big_buck_bunny_720p_surround.avi

RAR 6.24   Copyright (c) 1993-2023 Alexander Roshal   3 Oct 2023
Trial version             Type 'rar -?' for help

Evaluation copy. Please register.

Creating archive out.rar

Adding    big_buck_bunny_720p_surround.avi                            OK
Done
 ~ % du -sh big_buck_bunny_720p_surround.avi
321M    big_buck_bunny_720p_surround.avi
 ~ % du -sh out.rar
320M    out.rar

zomg save 1MB with compression

Mumbly

@CyberneticTitan said: zomg save 1MB with compression

In some cases you can get even slightly bigger file

The files in question (videos and pictures) are already going to be in a highly compressed state due to their file type and the algorithms associated with that. You can think about it like trying to put a .zip file inside a .zip file. Will it compress it more? Of course not, in fact it might even be slightly larger from the blocks that need to be added for the compression algorithm.

https://linustechtips.com/topic/347230-why-does-rar-means-bigger-file-sizes-to-me/

bethp

If it was pointless then are most of for example 4k copies of movies normally downloaded compressed .... if you are downloading a compressed movie then no need to compress it again but this is why I said there are a few factors, based on the little info I just put my own use case and said in my own opinion I compress movies and shows I have watched as it does help considering I store a lot of 4k content that is not already compressed.

I think you are getting the wrong idea here, I was simply saying that there is a use case for compressing to store and simply giving a statement that video is virtually incompressible is misleading as there is not enough information to say if it is already compressed, like I said what if the files are raw video files and not already compressed, read the OP that is not stated

david

Video files are always compressed using lossy compression that will degrade the quality. There is no such thing as a raw video file that can be compressed with lossless compression like zip. If you want to save space, it would have to be re-encoded with a higher compression level, which will take a lot of cpu/gpu to process and degrade the quality.

• There is such a thing as lossless video, but it's not something a normal person would ever see. The files would be huge. These would be used by special effects departments in movie studios, and things like that.

darkimmortal

Putting files in a rar or otherwise is a sure fire way to balloon the losses from bitrot

owais16

@bethp said:
How do you know they are heavily compressed? that was never mentioned, I would imagine that compressing 8tb of raw video would save you at least enough to make it worth so .....

Yes its already compressed from bigger source to smaller.

owais16

@Mumbly said:

@bethp said: How do you know they are heavily compressed?

Because I read? What raw videos?

@owais16 said: since i've lots of dramas need to keep in hard drive

Additional RAR compression of downloaded movies and dramas would be close to 1:1 size ratio.

Winrar uses lossless compression which will only compress based on the entropy of the data. A video file is very likely high entropy, especially if it is already compressed (for example mpeg files). Winrar will not be able to reduce the size of video files.

Thanks for understanding even i forgot it to mention it l.

PuDLeZ

rar won't do much for saving space since the videos are most likely already compressed. About the only thing you might gain is a recovery record for the rar but that will increase the size. I think the recovery record was only good in the early days of the internet since there could be issues with transfers and it allowed you to recover/not redownload the file but for an external drive, it's just a waste of time and space. You'd be better off just moving the files to the drive...

Note: I do recommend running a test/checking the drive health disk before using it if it's new just to confirm there's no issues with it already. I used to always check elements and easystore drives before I shucked them. I forget the program, it was something for linux but I'm sure you could easily google for it.