Compression formats with good support for random access within archives?

Question

This is similar to a previous question, but the answers there don\'t satisfy my needs and my question is slightly different:

I currently use gzip compression for som

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this would be practical in your exact situation, but couldn't you just gzip each large file into smaller files, say 10 MB each? You would end up with a bunch of files: file0.gz, file1.gz, file2.gz, etc. Based on a given offset within the original large, you could search in the file named "file" + (offset / 10485760) + ".gz". The offset within the uncompressed archive would be offset % 10485760.