Should you archive documents before backing up to the cloud?

Posted by gabbsmo on Super User See other posts from Super User or by gabbsmo
Published on 2012-03-21T11:12:35Z Indexed on 2012/03/21 11:32 UTC
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Filed under:

backup

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compression

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zip

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7-zip

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cloud-storage

I'm planning to add a cloud storage to my personal backup strategy. But now I wonder if it really is worth the trouble of compressing my documents and photos.

The Open XML-format already have zip-compression and JPEG is a lossy image format. So there really isn't much benefit in compressing. 20Mb of documents become about 17Mb at the ULTRA preset of 7-zip.

One benefit I can imagine is that you can shorten upload time by archiving the folders since it minimizes the number of requests that is needed to be sent to the server at upload and download.

So what are your thoughts and experience in this issue? Should you archive your documents before backing them up to the cloud?

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