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It is safe to preserve ISOs and BIN Files with this method? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello there,

Long story short: I have a big PC game collection from golden era (1995 - 2010) - digital ISOs and BINs and a limited space to preserve them. I dont trust clouds in any form, so I prefer old school external HDDs for store. For me 7Zip is a good way to archive them and save some space, but recently ive found out that if you convert a BIN or an ISO file to ECM and then you archive it with 7Zip (ultra compression), the final compression file size will be in most cases almost at a half compared to original non ECM file.

Example:

Original Bin file (rld-cl1.bin) - 672MB

Original Bin file zipped with 7zip on ultra compression (rld-cl1.7z) - 268MB

Original Bin file converted to ECM (rld-cl1.bin.ecm) - 586MB

Original Bin file converted to ECM zipped with 7zip on ultra compression (rld-cl1.bin.7z) - 195MB

So there is a difference of 73MB in this case.

Does this method is good? You can damage the BINs in any way if you ECM them, ZIP them, unzip them and UnECM them back to BIN? I noticed in properties of an UnECM(ed) BIN file that the BIN no longer have Last Modified Original Date - in this case was year 2005.

There are other different methods to save space? I dont care much about loading time from archiving/extracting. I just want to be sure that all the files remain untouched in this process. Thanks

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I wonder if uploading your stuff to archive.org could be a good choice? Download speeds can be terrible, but I doubt your stuff would be taken down from there

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

No way, I dont trust cloud storage at all. Offline storage is mine forever, cloud storage is yours temporary with an invisible countdown timer. And btw Ive read a few months ago that Archive org has an open lawsuit regarding digital rights storage, or something like that...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

It could still be worthwhile, just not as your only option. Do your local archiving as well but having it uploaded elsewhere could come in handy if the shit hits the fan.

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