Compress a file across disks

[Debbie Beresford]

We currently backup to disk and then compress the file once it is complete. However, we have outgrown our disk and can no longer compress to the same disk. How can I redirect the compressed output to another disk?

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

That is easy:

# compress < /dir/to/inputfile > /dir/to/outputfile.Z

The same works for gzip.

[Patrick Wallek]

I should have added that uncompress works the same way.

# uncompress < /dir/to/compressed.Z > /dir/to/uncompressed

[Jeff_Traigle]

You can also pipe the backup through compress (or gzip) directly, thus bypassing one write to disk. Example with tar:

tar cf - /path/to/backup | compress > /path/to/save

Can be done with any other backup utlity as well. Just use stdin (specified by -) as the archive file.

[Debbie Beresford]

Thanks. I was missing the <> and couldn't get it to work.

[Debbie Beresford]

This has been resolved.