How to use WinZip to make large (100GB+) updatable archive files/backups?

[Rangan Das]

My university PCs come with WinZip installed. These were recently updated to WinZip 22. My objective is to back up almost 168GB of data to my portable drive (as a single zip or rar file). However, WinZip is being extremely slow and I cannot install anything else (I generally use 7zip at home). The PCs are locked down pretty badly.

The PC runs on Windows 10 N, has 16gigs of RAM and an old AMD FX processor. Every time I try to add something to a new archive, the PC freezes up with high HDD usage. Using a portable version of 7zip also gives me really slow speeds. However, since WinZip comes with a backup feature, I wanted to make use of that.

I made a backup job in WinZip, but when I run it, I see no progress window or anything. There's just a high CPU/HDD usage because of winzip64.exe. When I kill the process, I see that some data is copied to my external drive, but again, no progress is shown.

Now, if the backup is a silent/backgroud process, is there an alternate way that is a bit more verbose? Or is there any other way in which I can back up all the data files into a single updatable archive?

 

[USAFRet]

Why are you using WinZip as your backup routine?
That IS going to be slow. The only thing you can do is simply let it run. Progress meters are often far off reality.

Can you install a real backup application? Macrium Reflect, perhaps.

 

[Rangan Das]

Why are you using WinZip as your backup routine?
That IS going to be slow. The only thing you can do is simply let it run. Progress meters are often far off reality.

Can you install a real backup application? Macrium Reflect, perhaps.

But does that come with a portable version that does not require administrative permissions to run? Like I said, it's not a personal PC. I am not the admin.

 

[USAFRet]

Why are you using WinZip as your backup routine?
That IS going to be slow. The only thing you can do is simply let it run. Progress meters are often far off reality.

Can you install a real backup application? Macrium Reflect, perhaps.

But does that come with a portable version that does not require administrative permissions to run? Like I said, it's not a personal PC. I am not the admin.

I believe you can use it directly off a bootable USB.
https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW7/Rescue+Environment

 

[USAFRet]

Alternatively, just save your personal docs on a USB stick or USB external drive.
The OS and applications are not yours and can be easily recreated by the uni admins. Your personal data is the only part that really counts.

 

[SkyNetRising]

My objective is to back up almost 168GB of data to my portable drive (as a single zip or rar file).

And what does that 168GB data consists of?
Is that even compressible data? If it's not compressible like videos, mp3, jpegs, then there's no point of compressing them.
Just copy data to your external storage normally without any archiving.

 

[Rangan Das]

Alternatively, just save your personal docs on a USB stick or USB external drive.
The OS and applications are not yours and can be easily recreated by the uni admins. Your personal data is the only part that really counts.

This is not an option, thanks to Bitlocker. I do know the password though. I can lock and unlock the drive, but not "manage it".

 

[USAFRet]

Alternatively, just save your personal docs on a USB stick or USB external drive.
The OS and applications are not yours and can be easily recreated by the uni admins. Your personal data is the only part that really counts.

This is not an option, thanks to Bitlocker. I do know the password though. I can lock and unlock the drive, but not "manage it".

You can't plug in an external and save to that?

 

[Rangan Das]

My objective is to back up almost 168GB of data to my portable drive (as a single zip or rar file).

And what does that 168GB data consists of?
Is that even compressible data? If it's not compressible like videos, mp3, jpegs, then there's no point of compressing them.
Just copy data to your external storage normally without any archiving.

A whole lot of bitmap images and raw avi files. These are mostly training and validation data from a machine learning setup. The setup is stored in a different machine, but we keep the data on multiple places.

Technically speaking, this type of data is highly compressible. So, even with the fastest variant of the zip compression algorithm, I can save some gigabytes. This is why I am also a little inclined towards using WinZip.

 

[USAFRet]

My objective is to back up almost 168GB of data to my portable drive (as a single zip or rar file).

And what does that 168GB data consists of?
Is that even compressible data? If it's not compressible like videos, mp3, jpegs, then there's no point of compressing them.
Just copy data to your external storage normally without any archiving.

A whole lot of bitmap images and raw avi files. These are mostly training and validation data from a machine learning setup. The setup is stored in a different machine, but we keep the data on multiple places.

Technically speaking, this type of data is highly compressible. So, even with the fastest variant of the zip compression algorithm, I can save some gigabytes. This is why I am also a little inclined towards using WinZip.

.avi isn't that compressible.
I just tested an avi file of 815 MB
With WinRAR, saving to a zip file, it finishes at 806MB.
Saving to a native .rar, it finishes at 805MB.

Saving 1.2% drive space.
Not worth the hassle.

 

[Rangan Das]

Alternatively, just save your personal docs on a USB stick or USB external drive.
The OS and applications are not yours and can be easily recreated by the uni admins. Your personal data is the only part that really counts.

This is not an option, thanks to Bitlocker. I do know the password though. I can lock and unlock the drive, but not "manage it".

You can't plug in an external and save to that?

That is the only thing I can do. But copying so many files take time. And the speed drops when there are many small files. There are folders with only 64x64 BMP files. And there are tons of them.

 

[Rangan Das]

My objective is to back up almost 168GB of data to my portable drive (as a single zip or rar file).

And what does that 168GB data consists of?
Is that even compressible data? If it's not compressible like videos, mp3, jpegs, then there's no point of compressing them.
Just copy data to your external storage normally without any archiving.

A whole lot of bitmap images and raw avi files. These are mostly training and validation data from a machine learning setup. The setup is stored in a different machine, but we keep the data on multiple places.

Technically speaking, this type of data is highly compressible. So, even with the fastest variant of the zip compression algorithm, I can save some gigabytes. This is why I am also a little inclined towards using WinZip.

.avi isn't that compressible.
I just tested an avi file of 815 MB
With WinRAR, saving to a zip file, it finishes at 806MB.
Saving to a native .rar, it finishes at 805MB.

Saving 1.2% drive space.
Not worth the hassle.

That probably is because it's already compressed. AVI is the encapsulating codec. Inside, the video stream can be h.264.

 

[USAFRet]

That is the only thing I can do. But copying so many files take time. And the speed drops when there are many small files. There are folders with only 64x64 BMP files. And there are tons of them.

And WinZip will also take a long time to do that. Probably longer than simple copying.

But how often are you copying those same 64x64 bmp files? Hopefully not the same ones every time.
This is where a good imaging application comes into play.
Like the above mentioned Macrium Reflect.

A single Full image, then a series of Incremental or Differential images.
Rather than doing the whole thing again and again and again.

 

[Rangan Das]

That is the only thing I can do. But copying so many files take time. And the speed drops when there are many small files. There are folders with only 64x64 BMP files. And there are tons of them.

And WinZip will also take a long time to do that. Probably longer than simple copying.

But how often are you copying those same 64x64 bmp files? Hopefully not the same ones every time.
This is where a good imaging application comes into play.
Like the above mentioned Macrium Reflect.

A single Full image, then a series of Incremental or Differential images.
Rather than doing the whole thing again and again and again.

I will probably back up once every two weeks for a year and a half.

 

[USAFRet]

I will probably back up once every two weeks for a year and a half.

Seriously...look into the actual backup/imaging tools.
Macrium Reflect, Casper, Acronis True Image, EaseUS ToDO.

Rather than trying to force WinZip into that role.

Also, talk to your IT dept. As you personally can't install anything, see what they recommend for how to do this.