Help with compressing Saturn images...

[Pearl Jammzz]

So, I am backin up all my Saturn games as some of you may know and when compressiong them I am confused as to what options to use and what each one means. Here they are, can anyone please clarify?

"Delete files after archiving"- Deletes the files you just compressed correct?

"Create SFX Archive"- Makes self-extracting exe?

"Create solid archive"- Have no idea what this does or what it's for.

"Put authenticity verification"- Puts who archived it, when, and what archive correct?

"Put recovery record"- Not quite sure it's significance.....

"Test archived files"- Tests the files u archive? How? What it test for?

"Lock archive"- Makes it so noone can add or subtract from the archive correct?

Can anyone help me? Also, while we are on the subject of compressing Sat games, how do I make an sfv file? Sorry I am new to most of this, dont do a lot of backing up.

 

[antime]

And here was me thinking that the program came with fairly comprehensive documentation. Oh well..

Solid archives treats all files in the archive as one big file. This can radically improve compression, but conversely in order to perform an operation on a single file in the archive, the entire archive must be processed which can be a lot slower. Probably worth switching on in this case.

Recovery records add data to the archive so it is still usable in case of corruption. How much corruption can be corrected depends on how many recovery records you use. Naturally they increase the size of the archive.

Instead of junk like sfv, use something more standard such as md5sum instead.

 

[MasterAkumaMatata]

Originally posted by antime+Jun 29, 2004 @ 05:39 AM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(antime @ Jun 29, 2004 @ 05:39 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'>Solid archives treats all files in the archive as one big file. This can radically improve compression, but conversely in order to perform an operation on a single file in the archive, the entire archive must be processed which can be a lot slower. Probably worth switching on in this case.[/b]

For compressing only a BIN and CUE file, I advise against creating a solid archive. According to this, you get better compression "when many smaller, similar files are being compressed." Besides, it's a pain in the ass having to wait for it to process the entire archive during situations where all you want is to extract just the CUE file. Yes, I am a cue file collector. 😀

<!--QuoteBegin-antime@Jun 29, 2004 @ 05:39 AM

Instead of junk like sfv, use something more standard such as md5sum instead.[/quote]

For those who are not command line savvy, but are rather GUI savvy, try MD5summer. 😛 It's very similar to Win-SFV in terms of usage.

 

[racketboy]

I just use Best compression and put recovery record. The recovery record has saved one of my archives that was having a hard time being read off of a DVD

 

[ExCyber]

SFV is pretty well supported, but I have a feeling that CRC32 is kind of a short hash for large files like CD images. I don't know enough about it to perform a proper statistical analysis though.

 

[gameboy900]

Umm...you don't SFV the CD image you SFV the archives and keep the SFV file seperate with them. It's meant more to make sure that the archives aren't corupt and if they are to know which ones.

 

[Pearl Jammzz]

wont winrar tell u if they are corrupt? haha

 

[mal]

It will, but IIRC checking against an sfv is quicker than testing the entire archive.

 

[ExCyber]

I may be mistaken, but I think the original motivation for SFV was that old versions of WinRAR could tell you that an archive was corrupt, but couldn't tell you which volume of a multi-volume archive was bad. IIRC, it will fail immediately on the bad volume now.