I've been told I can reduce file sizes by rar filing them,and reduce them further by rarfiling the rar file,

Question

and that I can do this as often as I like,but,when I try it I find the first time reduces the file,but every subsequent attempt has no effect on the file size. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You have been misinformed, unfortunately. As you have discovered, only the first go will actually reduce the file size. This is because it's already as compressed as it can be.

If you think about it for a moment, you'll see that it can't be possible to compress things as many times as you like - otherwise you could compress all the data into the world into a single character. (Here's the entire Internet: "A")

Answer 2

Rar is smart enough where it does multipass compression. This means that when you rar a file it is essentially rar-ing the file many times until it can't make it any smaller. If you want smaller filesizes, turn up the encryption level (set the time it takes to longest).

Answer 3

Trying to compress, compressed files will not work, and it is risky. Sometimes compressing compressed files can make the files within corrupt.

If you want to save disk space, copy files onto DVD R's and store them safely, 4.7GB per disk, its really a lot better than risking corrupt files :)

Answer 4

thats because you cannot reduce the reduced file ur jus doin the same thing over and over agen.