I was hoping to compress large files to archive onto DVD, but the compression seems to be either not working or somewhat insignificant. I'm running the command:

roger@mer /media/LACIE/Media/Pictures $ tar -czvf my_pictures.tgz Mine/

Both the original folder, and the resulting file are being reported as 1.7 GB

I've tried using the 'Create Archive' GUI (I'm using Linux Mint by the way...), and the resulting file has a tar.gz extension, and appears to be the same size. (Again, 1.7 GB)

Is tar / gzip not working, or has insignificant affects? Is there a better program, or is the displayed properties giving the uncompressed size of the file? Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

If the files you're archiving are images or videos, as your path seems to imply, then you probably aren't going to see much compression. In most cases multimedia formats are already compressed. In some cases you can even see a negative effect since the compression itself adds some overhead. Compression works best on text-based files.

Edit: Check out the wikipedia page on data compression.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression

1 members found this post helpful.

That explains enough, not quite what I was hoping for, but informative nonetheless.

Thanks.