You can quickly and easily create compressed disk images from folders to archive projects. The resulting disk image saves space, reduces clutter and hides the files from searches. You can also encrypt the disk images to secure the files.
Toddz: Great question. To get at your files again in a zip, you'd need to decompress the whole thing, turning it back into a folder of files. Then get the file, then delete all of it, leaving only the zip. But with a disk image, you open the disk image (it appears like a thumb drive) then you can get at the files. Then just close it when you are done.
Mike Taylor
8 years ago
Great video Gary, but how much compression can one expect using this procedure? Is there a standard percentage? Thank you.
Mike: It depends heavily on what type of files you've got and how compressed they already are. Image and video files, for instance, are already very compressed by their nature, so you may not get anything. But text and data files are not compressed much and you may get 50% or better.
Frank Grimaldi
8 years ago
This is cool, did not know you can do that. This could be very useful. Thank you.
Kika Wai'Alae
7 years ago
So what happens if I delete the original folder and learn that my program cannot link to it anymore? If the archive is now on a different drive, do I have to re-link files to it or do I create the original folder and move it back?
Kika: I'm not sure what you mean. So you are saying you take a folder, make a Disk Image from that folder, right? Then they are two separate things. Everything in the Disk Image is a copy of what was in the folder. What program are you using that has linked files? If it allows you to relink files then you can, it has nothing to do with whether the files came from a Disk Image or somewhere else.
What's the benefit to using disk image, rather than zip?
Toddz: Great question. To get at your files again in a zip, you'd need to decompress the whole thing, turning it back into a folder of files. Then get the file, then delete all of it, leaving only the zip. But with a disk image, you open the disk image (it appears like a thumb drive) then you can get at the files. Then just close it when you are done.
Great video Gary, but how much compression can one expect using this procedure? Is there a standard percentage? Thank you.
Mike: It depends heavily on what type of files you've got and how compressed they already are. Image and video files, for instance, are already very compressed by their nature, so you may not get anything. But text and data files are not compressed much and you may get 50% or better.
This is cool, did not know you can do that. This could be very useful. Thank you.
So what happens if I delete the original folder and learn that my program cannot link to it anymore? If the archive is now on a different drive, do I have to re-link files to it or do I create the original folder and move it back?
Kika: I'm not sure what you mean. So you are saying you take a folder, make a Disk Image from that folder, right? Then they are two separate things. Everything in the Disk Image is a copy of what was in the folder. What program are you using that has linked files? If it allows you to relink files then you can, it has nothing to do with whether the files came from a Disk Image or somewhere else.