I'm intended to package up quite a lot of data in to archives so that I can store them using an on-line file storage service and to various local backups – the intention being that this will be fairly long term static storage.
I'm currently planning to compress them using 7zip into .7z files, but I'd rather compress the folder tree in large chucks, such that each archive will contain ~350Mb-1Gb of data (before compression) and I'm wondering how resilient the format is to damage.
Is the archive structured such that "minor" damage can be corrected?
Or if the damage is "serious", will it destroy the entire archive – or just those files in the specific site of the damage within the archive?
Essentially, the hidden question here is: should I package in to lots of small separate archives or few large ones?
Best Answer
Any compression tool is going to be subject to corruption issues on very large files. Your best bet is probably to use smaller files, but NOT volumes of a larger archive - as separate archives.
AFAIK 7zip will lose the whole archive if you have file damage in a portion of the archive.