Create Multi-part Archives to Split Large Files for Emailing, Writing to CD [How To]

By Rich on January 4, 2011 (4 Comments)

In the last guide, I showed you how to extract files from multi-part archives. If you want to create on of these archives yourself, follow this guide. This guide will show you how to create multi-part archives with the following tools:

7-Zip
WinRAR

Why would you want to create a multi-part archive?

You want to email a large file to a friend but your email limits attachment sizes to 20MB.
You want to host a file and want people to have a greater chance of wasting less time with failed downloads.
You have a file that’s over 4GB and you’re moving it to a file system that doesn’t support such a large size (i.e. FAT32.)
You need to spread the archive across multiple thumb drives, CDs, DVDs etc.

Note: You can download 7-zip here.

Create a Multi-part Archive with 7-Zip

To create a multi-part archive with 7-zip:

1. Right click the folder or collection of files you want to archive and click 7-Zip > Add to archive…

extract archives04 Create Multi part Archives to Split Large Files for Emailing, Writing to CD [How To]

2. Choose an archive format i.e. zip and under Split volumes, bytes type the size you’d like each part to be. i.e. 20M for 20MB pieces.

extract archives05 Create Multi part Archives to Split Large Files for Emailing, Writing to CD [How To]

3. Create the archive and verify the archive was created without error by extracting the multi-part archive to your hard drive.

Create a Multi-part Archive with WinRAR

WinRAR is also a great tool to use to create multiple archives. Download WinRAR.

To create a multi-part archive with WinRAR:

1. Right click the folder or collection of files you want to archive and click Add to archive…

extract archives06 Create Multi part Archives to Split Large Files for Emailing, Writing to CD [How To]

2. Choose an archive format i.e. rar and under Split to volumes, bytes type the size you’d like each part to be. i.e. 20mb for 20MB pieces.

extract archives07 Create Multi part Archives to Split Large Files for Emailing, Writing to CD [How To]

3. Create the archive and verify the archive was created without error by extracting the multi-part archive to your hard drive.

About Rich

Rich is the owner and creator of Windows Guides; he spends his time breaking things on his PC so he can write how-to guides to fix the problems he creates.

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Comments

http://richr.org/ Rich

It all depends on the type of data and whether it is already compressed (i.e. jpg, mp3.) You can compress a 4GB text file full of Q’s into just a few KB.
http://richr.org/ Rich

Instead of storing each character like an uncompressed file will, the compression software (depending on the algorithm used) will essentially store the character once and map it xx million/billion times (it would be a lot of Qs to reach 4GB–depending on the encoding, it could be as many as 4.1 billion Qs.) So you use about a byte to represent the Q (assuming ASCII) and a few more bytes to represent 4 billion occurrences and a few KB for header information, which makes just a few KB total.

This is definitely a simple explanation, but I hope it relays the point: not all files are created equal and the compression ratio is determined by the number of files and the opportunity for compression on these files.

Hope that helps.
http://richr.org/ Rich

This (http://www.howstuffworks.com/file-compression.htm) gives a great explanation.
Fake

Thanks for the help!

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