Data Compression

What Does Data Compression Mean?

Data compression is the process of modifying, encoding or converting the bits structure of data in such a way that it consumes less space on disk.

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It enables reducing the storage size of one or more data instances or elements. Data compression is also known as source coding or bit-rate reduction.

Techopedia Explains Data Compression

Data compression enables sending a data object or file quickly over a network or the Internet and in optimizing physical storage resources.

Data compression has wide implementation in computing services and solutions, specifically data communications. Data compression works through several compressing techniques and software solutions that utilize data compression algorithms to reduce the data size.

A common data compression technique removes and replaces repetitive data elements and symbols to reduce the data size. Data compression for graphical data can be lossless compression or lossy compression, where the former saves all replaces but save all repetitive data and the latter deletes all repetitive data.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.