Compress Drive To Save Disk Space

[Tushar]

1. What is this function in properties of my HDD's should
I enable it.

2. Will it zip all my files and then I have to go on
removing each of them.

3. Also I started a bit of this but it was taking too
long and it said that it couldnt compress ieexplore.exe
etc because it was being used so I ignored and cancelled
now my drive text appears blue in colour why ???

4. Also how much time will it take to compress a drive of
37.2 GB with 85% free disk space approx.

5. Will i make my comp run faster or slower???

 

[Squire]

Your drive will run slower if you compress it, as the individual files will
have to de-compress before they can be used.
The NTFS file system is the best all around to use, as it takes up less
space than FAT32, and you don't have to worry about large disk size.

 

[Alex Nichol]

1. What is this function in properties of my HDD's should
I enable it.

2. Will it zip all my files and then I have to go on
removing each of them.

I would strongly advice not trying to compress a whole drive, and most
certainly not the C: drive used for boot or the one where the system's
windows folder is (if different). Components will be needed at boot
before the decompression software comes into use, and if they cannot be
used then it is disastrous.

Compression is part of the NTFS file system (so you need a drive
formatted as NTFS) and is transparent, done on the fly. You do not
notice the difference other than perhaps a bit of slowness in access.

At the price of drives these days it should not be done regardless.
Just compress selected folders that do not get used very often and whose
contents are going to compress enough to be worth it. For example,
folders of jpg photos; mp3 music; mpg or wmv videos have files that are
already compressed as far as possible; trying to do more will make
things worse rather than better. Two folders that do pay compression
are the windows\system32\dllcache and windows\ServicePackFiles folders -
neither used more than occasionally but will between them save a couple
of hundred MB.

Do it by right clicking such a selected folder, Properties and click
Advanced. On Apply take the option to apply to subfolders and files

 

[Plato]

1. What is this function in properties of my HDD's should
I enable it.

NOT recommended.