True Image - Compression issues

I have two internal hard drives; C (40 GB) is used for the obvious (WIndows XP Pro) and D (300) is used for media. I store the two images on an external USB 2 hard drive. When Imaging C with 14.5 GB of data, I get an Image size of 10.5 using high compresion. Ok. When I image D with 66.9 GB of data, I get an Image size of 68.2 using high compression. I have tried all the comnpression rate options and the result is the same 68.2 GB. The Image is LARGER than the amount of data It appears True Image will NOT compress an Image of drive D. Thanks

 

Re: Ture Imag - Compression issues

it could be an algorithm bug for the estimated size. are u using the latest version of true image?

 

Is most of the data on D is in a compressed format AKA MP3's, AVI's etc. If so it would not be abnormal for the image to be larger than the original data.
An easy way to see this would be to zip up a mp3 or similar compressed file and compare the file size to the original. The zip will be larger as the container <zip> takes up some space it self.

 

I am using the latest version of True Image and the data consists of mp3s and jpgs. I have noticed that when Imaging drive C; I get the Image size and time in the box bellow the choosen compression level option. When I Image Drive D; there is no information in the box irregardles of which level of compression I chose. Thanks for the prompt replies.

 

Sorry, I forgot to mention that none of the data is compressed before imaging.

 

But MP3s and Jpegs are created with high compression in mind. That's why a non compressed music wave file of 54MB will turn out to be about a 5.4MB MP3 file when converted to that format. That's 10 to one compression. Now that's compressed!!

Same with taking a raw binary image of a photo and converting in to Jpeg format. It is highly compressed using that conversion.

When you make an image of such already highly compressed files and try and compress them even more, they will not get smaller. Best way to image that partition, if it contains mostly compressed files, is to use no compression. It will be faster in formation and on restore.

...Allen

 

Using no compression will cut the image creation time down. Jolly good. I had hoped to cut down on the image size though. Very well. Thanks for the prompt info everyone.