AutoCompress not as portable as before

[webfork]

The latest version of AutoCompress write some very basic settings to AppData. By definition, its not strictly portable, but its none of the settings are critical to the program or a likely privacy violation.

http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=175

I think this is an important program because its one of the few tools I've come across that uses compression intelligently depending on whether or not it will actually save space. Small, new, and already-compressed files are automatically skipped. In fact I think I'll paste this paragraph in the comments.

Anyway, should a note be added? Or does anyone have a copy of the more portable version?

The author has been contacted.

[webfork]

Not sure this topic requires a separate thread so I'll just add to this section:

Recommended settings for Autocompress?

First, the default settings:

• Compress
  % 40
  age 5
  size 4096
• Uncompress
  % 66
  age 14
  size 4096

What this is essentially saying

• Compress my files if they will reduce to 40% or less of it's original size, it's older than 5 days, and only if it's greater than 4096 bytes
• Uncompress my files if the compression ratio is higher than 66% (not very good), my file if it was modified since 14 days ago, or is very small (at or below 4096 bytes).

Analysis/Rationale

I'm a little confused by the dates as it seems like with the defaults the file will compress the files older than 5 days (fairly young in terms of files, usually something you worked on this week) and then immediately uncompress everything you did in the last two weeks (including the young files). Maybe I'm misreading this. Also, the program is also suggesting that very small files shouldn't be compressed. I've never heard that.

It also seems like you'd want to uncompress files that already won't see much compression. For example, MP3 and ZIP files are already near their maximum so you would never see anything but a tiny percentage larger. As such, compressing these files means wasting energy as you uncompressing them twice whenever you open them and saving no space in the process. As such, compressing items based purely on age doesn't make any sense.

What I went with

• Compress
  % 40
  age 0
  size 4096
• Uncompress (unchecked)

For a drive that already had some compression in some areas, I would set decompression percentage to 90, just to avoid decompressing a file twice when I access it.

[Craunch]

The screenshot on the AutoCompress entry here shows Compress age 28, Uncompress age 14. That looks a bit more sensible.

What I'm not clear about is which file date it uses to determine age - Creation date, Modification date or Last Access date, and whether it preserves them through compression/uncompression. I'm not quite interested enough in this at the moment to download it to find out as my own view on compression is that if compression does not reduce the number of disk blocks a file uses, it is pointless. AutoCompress works on percentages which in not really what I'm looking for.

[webfork]

Old thread update:

Despite it's age, I'm still using AutoCompress for some operations on my Win7 box. However, for some specifics if you don't like using an automatic tool, I found a great article on NTFS compression.

[bzl333]

had 5/52 results on VT fwiw. probably nothing.

[webfork]

had 5/52 results on VT fwiw. probably nothing.

https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/fdd9 ... /analysis/

[webfork]

An alternative to AutoCompress is now available that's open source:

https://github.com/Freaky/Compactor

The program is in beta and may not be in development, so I'm holding off on testing. But I can see some backup drives really benefiting from this.

Note also that if you read through the website, it'll recommend against the high compression LZX format.

[Andrew Lee]

BTW, the home page for AutoCompress appears to be gone.

I have updated the entry to point to Softpedia for the time being, which still offers the last available version for download.

[webfork]

I have updated the entry to point to Softpedia for the time being, which still offers the last available version for download.

Oh good, I didn't even think to check -- well done.