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I've got a Linux server I can only connect to remotely. I want to backup it, but it'll have to be over the Internet, and I've chosen Google Drive to hold the backups. The only piece of puzzle I still don't have is how to package and compress all the files. I want compression, because space on the Google Drive is limited, and it would also reduce upload times.

I could of course use the standard tar+gzip/bzip, or zip, or maybe even something fancy like 7z for best compression.

But what I'm wondering about is this - many of the files that will need to be backed up will be things like JPEG images, which don't compress well at all, no matter which compressor I use. It would be faster if those files were copied to the target archive as-is, rather than compressed. Other files are text files, which compress better with a specialized algorithm (can you tell yet that I'm backing up websites?).

Is there some kind of archiver which recognizes such files (by file extension would be fine) and applies a different algorithm for them? I think I've seen one somewhere, but I don't remember which one it was and if it has a Linux version.

Or perhaps I'm overthinking this?

Vilx-
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  • Why is this off-topic? – Vilx- Jun 17 '15 at 07:44
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    The reason is in http://serverfault.com/help/on-topic – Jenny D Jun 18 '15 at 09:44
  • There is nothing server specific in your question. – Cristian Ciupitu Jun 19 '15 at 00:04
  • @CristianCiupitu - many of the questions on SF are not strictly server-specific, but could be equally applied to desktops. – Vilx- Jun 19 '15 at 08:14
  • @Vilx-, yes, there are some old questions like that, but this doesn't mean it should still happen. In my opinion, general purpose questions belong to the [Super User](http://superuser.com) or [Unix & Linux SE](http://unix.stackexchange.com) sites, where's a wider audience which includes regular users, not just system administrators. More people can benefit. – Cristian Ciupitu Jun 19 '15 at 20:32

1 Answers1

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Try FreeArc. It can auto-select LZMA/PPD/Multimedia compression:

Includes LZMA, PPMD, TrueAudio and generic Multimedia compression algorithms with automatic switching by file type

Cristian Ciupitu
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user55570
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