Data compression is the compacting of information by reducing the number of bits that are stored or transmitted. Consequently, the compressed info needs substantially less disk space than the original one, so much more content might be stored on the same amount of space. There're many different compression algorithms which function in different ways and with several of them just the redundant bits are deleted, so once the info is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others delete unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data at a later time will lead to reduced quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content needs a significant amount of system resources, in particular CPU processing time, therefore every hosting platform which uses compression in real time needs to have sufficient power to support this attribute. An example how data can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" the number of consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of storing the actual code.
Data Compression in Hosting
The cloud hosting platform where your hosting account shall be made employs the reliable ZFS file system. The LZ4 compression method that the aforementioned uses is superior in a number of aspects, and not only does it compress info better than any compression method which other file systems use, but it is also faster. The benefits can be significant in particular on compressible content like website files. While it may sound irrational, uncompressing data with LZ4 is faster than reading uncompressed info from a hard drive, so the performance of any Internet site hosted on our servers will be boosted. The better and faster compression rates also allow us to generate numerous daily backups of the whole content in every single Internet hosting account, so should you delete something by mistake, the last back-up copy which we have won't be more than a couple of hours old. This is possible as the backups take a lot less space and their generation is quick enough, to not influence the performance of our servers.