Issue with large archive HDD causes WinUAE to lock itself and Windows up

[chip]

I collect anything instead

So, good search

[Tomislav]

Originally Posted by AMIGASYSTEM

I would avoid using compressors LHA, ZIP, RAR etc..
The best solution is to compress all demos individually with PowerPacker or CrunchMania. Once this is done you can copy all the file self-extracting to a HardFile from 2GB/4GB to keep the double or triple copies.
Compressing these "full" HardFiles would be useless because the content is already compressed

I think that many demos are already compressed. There are some rare programs for which that compression is bad. You can try with some programs from WorkBench 1.2/1.3, if you compress them they will crash.

For accessing HardFiles is, eventually, only good NTFS compression which is transparent and you can always (un)check "Compress contents to save disk space" (of course, you will need to wait to (de)compression stop).

There is program called TreeSize Free (https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/) in which you can see NTFS compression ratio and you can (de)compress individual files as you wish. (Just don't compress windows system files because some of them needs to be uncompressed, otherwise you will not be able to enter in Windows.)

[Foebane]

The only hardfile I have is the ClassicWB "System.hdf" I use for WB stuff, and that is compressed with RAR to a SFX (self-extracting archive), because it is 200Mb uncompressed and a mere 18Mb when compressed, as most of it is empty. It's most likely the only Amiga file I still keep compressed, but since the SFX also contains a folder structure for temporary files (like extracted WHDLoad archives and the System.hdf file) then that can stay.

"Compress contents to save space"? I don't use that anymore, I have plenty of space, and most of it never gets used, even though I have a 250Mb SSD only.