Solve : Compressing C?

1.	Solve : Compressing C?
Answer» On the properties window for my C: drive (local disk) it gives me the option of compressing it to save disk space. I have 7.69gb out of 30.5gb and I was wondering if this is a bad idea. I really would like to extend the life of my HDD without having to format it, so any disk saving ideas would be greatly apreciated.compressing may cause problem on pc's that don't SUPPORT the compressing. who knew.What computers do not support compression?compression is a feature of NTFS. It will obviously slow down disk reads/writes but wether that's noticable is a case of perception. Quote from: Helpmeh on May 28, 2009, 08:55:52 PM On the properties window for my C: drive (local disk) it gives me the option of compressing it to save disk space. I have 7.69gb out of 30.5gb and I was wondering if this is a bad idea Do you have a lot of games installed? You do disk cleanup and defrag right? Quote from: Helpmeh on May 28, 2009, 08:55:52 PM I really would like to extend the life of my HDD without having to format it Why not? Do you not have your Windows CD? Have you not backed up recently? Can't you put some stuff on that flash drive?I used to compress "Old Files", and typically it would save less than 10 MBytes. One day I tried, and it promised 100 MBytes improvement because I had not used it for a little while, and about one PERCENT of the files exceeded the 30 day threshold. What it delivered was a 50 MByte degradation in the other direction, AND it took over one hour to do so. Many of the "old files" were vital system files in which Windows File Protection takes an unhealthy INTEREST; and because Windows does not trust Windows (and neither do I) it mistrusted its own compression and re-validated all these system files, and after validation it dumped duplicate copies in system32/dllcache. INFINITELY WORSE - several files failed validation, and W.F.P. demanded a Windows CD which was never supplied - ACER pre-installed XP on my PC. The above disasters were unleashed when I allowed Windows to choose what to compress, and it chose to deal with only one percent of the drive. I dread to think of the results had I told it to compress the whole drive ! ! As I said, I do not trust Windows, so before "cleaning up" the PC I created a disk partition image, and I immediately recovered form disaster. Since then I noticed that the disc partition image immediately after compressing files are a little larger than the image taken before. This is because the new compressed file takes less disk space, but still holds the original data, and in addition holds an extra overhead of some sort of (de)compression dictionary, and my archive system applies its own compression, so the end-product image is NOT affected by the size of the files it compresses, but IS controlled by the amount of data (including the extra overheads.) Regards Alan Quote from: Helpmeh on May 28, 2009, 08:55:52 PM I really would like to extend the life of my HDD without having to format it, so any disk saving ideas would be greatly apreciated. File/disk compression will not extend the life your your hard drive. Only compress or encrypt files that you have backed up. Introducing compression/encryption increases the difficulty of RECOVERING files in the event of HARDWARE or software failure.Personally i recommend staying away from it... As Rob stated it can be troublesome recovering compressed files. I'm a big fan of just simply adding more storage space. In your case if you were to buy a larger HDD you could simply "clone" the old drive to it and be back up running in about 25 minutes with room to spare...

Answer»

On the properties window for my C: drive (local disk) it gives me the option of compressing it to save disk space. I have 7.69gb out of 30.5gb and I was wondering if this is a bad idea. I really would like to extend the life of my HDD without having to format it, so any disk saving ideas would be greatly apreciated.compressing may cause problem on pc's that don't SUPPORT the compressing. who knew.What computers do not support compression?compression is a feature of NTFS. It will obviously slow down disk reads/writes but wether that's noticable is a case of perception. Quote from: Helpmeh on May 28, 2009, 08:55:52 PM

On the properties window for my C: drive (local disk) it gives me the option of compressing it to save disk space. I have 7.69gb out of 30.5gb and I was wondering if this is a bad idea

Do you have a lot of games installed?
You do disk cleanup and defrag right?

Quote from: Helpmeh on May 28, 2009, 08:55:52 PM

I really would like to extend the life of my HDD without having to format it

Why not? Do you not have your Windows CD? Have you not backed up recently?
Can't you put some stuff on that flash drive?I used to compress "Old Files", and typically it would save less than 10 MBytes.

One day I tried, and it promised 100 MBytes improvement because I had not used it for a little while, and about one PERCENT of the files exceeded the 30 day threshold.

What it delivered was a 50 MByte degradation in the other direction, AND it took over one hour to do so.

Many of the "old files" were vital system files in which Windows File Protection takes an unhealthy INTEREST;
and because Windows does not trust Windows (and neither do I)
it mistrusted its own compression and re-validated all these system files,
and after validation it dumped duplicate copies in system32/dllcache.

INFINITELY WORSE - several files failed validation, and W.F.P. demanded a Windows CD which was never supplied - ACER pre-installed XP on my PC.

The above disasters were unleashed when I allowed Windows to choose what to compress, and it chose to deal with only one percent of the drive. I dread to think of the results had I told it to compress the whole drive ! !

As I said, I do not trust Windows, so before "cleaning up" the PC I created a disk partition image, and I immediately recovered form disaster.

Since then I noticed that the disc partition image immediately after compressing files are a little larger than the image taken before. This is because the new compressed file takes less disk space, but still holds the original data, and in addition holds an extra overhead of some sort of (de)compression dictionary, and my archive system applies its own compression, so the end-product image is NOT affected by the size of the files it compresses, but IS controlled by the amount of data (including the extra overheads.)

Regards
Alan
Quote from: Helpmeh on May 28, 2009, 08:55:52 PM

I really would like to extend the life of my HDD without having to format it, so any disk saving ideas would be greatly apreciated.

File/disk compression will not extend the life your your hard drive.

Only compress or encrypt files that you have backed up. Introducing compression/encryption increases the difficulty of RECOVERING files in the event of HARDWARE or software failure.Personally i recommend staying away from it...
As Rob stated it can be troublesome recovering compressed files.
I'm a big fan of just simply adding more storage space.

In your case if you were to buy a larger HDD you could simply "clone" the old drive to it and be back up running in about 25 minutes with room to spare...

Solve : Compressing C?

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