If I compress files with WinRAR and then extract them repeatedly, can the files gradually become damaged or lose quality? I'm especially wondering whether this is different for documents, images, videos, or other file types. I also want to use password protection on the archive.
3 Answers
There is a small practical risk that an archive or storage device could become corrupted, but that risk isn’t caused by repeatedly compressing the files. Use archive integrity checks and keep backups if the files are important. Password protection is also fine and doesn’t make the compression lossy.
No. ZIP and RAR compression are lossless, so extracting the archive restores the exact same bytes every time. The files don’t gradually lose quality, regardless of how often you compress and extract them.
Lossless compression works by storing the same data more efficiently, not by throwing information away. That’s different from formats such as JPEG, MP3, or heavily compressed video, where some data is discarded during re-encoding and quality can decrease.
Related Questions
How to Build a Custom GPT Journalist That Posts Directly to WordPress
Fix Not Being Able To Add New Categories With Intuitive Category Checklist For Wordpress
Get Real User IP Without Installing Cloudflare Apache Module
How to Get Total Line Count In Visual Studio 2013 Without Addons
Install and Configure PhpMyAdmin on Centos 7
How To Setup PostfixAdmin With Dovecot and Postfix Virtual Mailbox