Sparse Files

[RichieScar]

Hi

I may have inadvertantly copied some of my discs as sparse files. To save me the time in doing them again, is there a easy way of telling wheter the ISO's are sparse or not?

Thx for any help with this!

Best Regards

Richard

 

[James]

Hi

I may have inadvertantly copied some of my discs as sparse files. To save me the time in doing them again, ...

Stupid question, why? Is there a problem with sparse files?

 

[RichieScar]

Why is it a stupid question? I 'd rather not have sparse files, a personal preference that's all. If you can' t advise don't say anything rather than be cocky and rude!

 

[Ch3vr0n]

Careful, there's no better person to answer this than James. He's the lead dev on Anydvd.

Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk

 

[coopervid]

@James ,

please shortly explain the difference between sparse and regular ISOs. I could but I might only be 99% correct.

 

[coopervid]

Here is a wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_file

 

[KevinS72]

Why is it a stupid question? I 'd rather not have sparse files, a personal preference that's all. If you can' t advise don't say anything rather than be cocky and rude!

I believe James was implying his "why?" was a stupid question and not that your question was stupid. I'm assuming your ISO's are on an NTFS file system or a Linux file system that supports sparse files?
From what I found it seems you would compare the actual file size to the size on disk and if the size on disk is less then either there is compression or it was flagged as a sparse file. I found one ISO that was created as a sparse file on my hard drive (Windows NTFS) as an example where the size on disk is less than the file size.



* If you copy or move a sparse file to a FAT or a non-NTFS volume, the file is built to its originally specified size. If the required space is not available, the operation does not complete.

Here is a command-line tool to check for or modify the sparse file attribute.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/fsutil-sparse

 

[coopervid]

I guess that's about it. Saving a few percent of disc space is not that important anymore as it was some years ago.

 

[James]

I believe James was implying his "why?" was a stupid question and not that your question was stupid.

Yes. I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

[deltamind106]

A sparse file's behavior is identical in every way to a normal file, except that the underlying operating system is storing it with different encoding. Worrying about whether a file is stored as a sparse file, is like worrying about whether the screws holding your hard drive together are Phillips-head or flat-head. I mean if you have enough idle brain bandwidth to worry about such details and it rocks your socks off, then go for it I guess.

 

[Guig2000]

Thanks for the explanation, II was wondering what are this sparse file. Now I understand that it does not removes anything more during the rip process, but I'm a bit doubtfull about the efficiency of compression video files. I'm going to try it!

 

[DrXenos]

Thanks for the explanation, II was wondering what are this sparse file. Now I understand that it does not removes anything more during the rip process, but I'm a bit doubtfull about the efficiency of compression video files. I'm going to try it!

In comp. sci., a "sparse" data structure is one that only uses space for the parts that contains real data. In this case, its a file that only uses space on the disc for the part of the file with real data. This is, if the file is 1 GB in size but really only contains 1 MB of actual data, the file only uses 1 MB (there about) of the disc. It has nothing to do with the encoding or compression of the actual data, itself. It's useful when the data will have large sections of 0's, for example, as you can avoid having to store it on the disc.