Im currently at a friends house and he needs to do a full format yet he has no way to backup his files...

I was thinking about draging my computer all the way down here to backup what he wants but I was chating witha friend over the net and he said to make the folder I want to save ziped in dos he said it took a 600mbs folder he had to like 200mbs or 20mbs or something like that.

Seeing as this computer is on a 56k and im to lazy to go get my computer anyone know what he is talking about or where to go for a program like this....

Someone told me to use kzip. Tryed that but it only took off a few mbs think it was like 7mbs it took off still not small enough he said it would take the files and when you open the dos file it would start unpacking the files into the dir your in. Just dont know of a program anyone know here?

WinRAR is pretty good for files, (and there is something better but I can't remember what it is)...

Anyway, I'd say burn it all to CD... If he doesn't have a CD burner then tell him:

[If he has windows 95/98/not XP) just to move everything off of the desktop/out of the windows directory, and then delete the windows directory in dos (using deltree).

Or if he is using windows XP then just delete the windows directory (again, in dos... you can access this through the CD).

Then install windows WITHOUT formating the drive...

The smartest thing to do it to actually use partition magic, create a second "partition" (you should ALWAYS have more than one partition... Damn M$ for not having this as DEFAULT).... Move everything on to that second partition and then format and install over the first...

I say go with the second (last) one if you don't know what you're doing, once you get more experienced you tend to lean towards the first (two).

There aren't really any compression tools THAT much better than WinRar, the thing is WinRar defaults to un-solid, archives at only a third or half of the possible compression.

Off the top of my head the app most use instead is 7zip but, it's amateurish with a horrible UI and not as many features. But it defaults to solid archives, with maximum compression, so it seems better "out of the box" or whatever.

I have a little more faith and trust in Rarlabs when it comes to sensitive information.

Also, if you have 30 dollars, those USB flash Harddrives are handy as hell, and you could back up your files without having to worry about burning or having to reinstall any software, just straight from the usb slot.

Yeah, those USB sticks are fab-o ... Although I don't have one myself...

I tried RAR with solid but saw basically 0 improvement in the files I rar'd, maybe 100k in an 8 meg group of files.... I think the extra 100k is better than risking losing alot of the files in the archive.

I know a really really good program which supports zip, rar and many other formats. It's free, but I can't remember the name. It's on my computer (I'm using my dad's) and that has been taken apart and put into a tiny room with 2 other room's full of stuff so we could have part of the house re-carpeted).

As for having an automatic two partitions, I'd have to agree with you CW. Just another reason why I hate Microsoft.