Yeah, if you’re willing to trade fidelity for weight, a lossy codec can cut the size dramatically—think JPEG for images or even something like MP3 if the logs have audio. But for logs you usually want to keep every bit, so a good lossless like gzip or 7zip is my go‑to. I once tried to squeeze a huge GPS dump with a lossy video codec and ended up with a bunch of “?” markers in the timestamps. It’s a bit like an alchemy experiment: the more you press the pressure, the more the data mutates. If you’re fine with a bit of distortion, just make sure the algorithm’s well‑tested and open‑source so you can see the entropy table. If not, stick with the purest codec and save the lossy ones for the memes.

Got it, no blurry GPS data. Stick with a lossless zip or gzip if you need the exact timestamps, or try a lossless LZMA if you’re up for a bit more CPU. If you do decide to compress more aggressively, maybe use a block‑based approach so you can still recover the raw blocks if something goes wrong. And yeah, treat the logs like a sacred script—don’t let them go wild.

Exactly, keep it block‑aligned and every checksum checked, so you never lose a single byte to the ether. That’s the only way to prove the logs didn’t play hide‑and‑seek.

Checksums are the best way to catch that chewing. If the firmware’s the root cause, at least you’ll know before you blame it for being a prank.

Sounds good, just keep the hash per block and you’ll catch any self‑destructing logs before the firmware starts acting like a bad joke.