??? Cannot Compress Drive ???

[Alan Foxmore]

Hi everyone,

I'm an administrator on my XP Pro SP2 machine.

I have a hard drive attached to my machine via a USB 2.0 drive enclosure
(I'm not sure if this fact is even relevant). I can use the drive with no
problems. When I right click on the drive letter and view properties,
"General" tab, I see I do *not* have the option of compressing this drive
for some reason.

Oddly, I have a second hard drive attached to the same machine via another
drive enclosure and this drive *does* have the option to compress.

Both drives are NTFS.

Can someone offer some insight as to why the one drive cannot be compressed?

Thanks very much.

Alan

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Alan Foxmore" <[email protected]>

| Hi everyone,
|
| I'm an administrator on my XP Pro SP2 machine.
|
| I have a hard drive attached to my machine via a USB 2.0 drive enclosure
| (I'm not sure if this fact is even relevant). I can use the drive with no
| problems. When I right click on the drive letter and view properties,
| "General" tab, I see I do *not* have the option of compressing this drive
| for some reason.
|
| Oddly, I have a second hard drive attached to the same machine via another
| drive enclosure and this drive *does* have the option to compress.
|
| Both drives are NTFS.
|
| Can someone offer some insight as to why the one drive cannot be compressed?
|
| Thanks very much.
|
| Alan
|

NTFS or FAT32 ?

 

[JS]

Have you used Disk Manager to Enable drive compression (check the drive
properties in Disk Manager)?

JS

 

[Alan Foxmore]

From: "Alan Foxmore" <[email protected]>

| Hi everyone,
|
| I'm an administrator on my XP Pro SP2 machine.
|
| I have a hard drive attached to my machine via a USB 2.0 drive enclosure
| (I'm not sure if this fact is even relevant). I can use the drive with
no
| problems. When I right click on the drive letter and view properties,
| "General" tab, I see I do *not* have the option of compressing this
drive
| for some reason.
|
| Oddly, I have a second hard drive attached to the same machine via
another
| drive enclosure and this drive *does* have the option to compress.
|
| Both drives are NTFS.
|
| Can someone offer some insight as to why the one drive cannot be
compressed?
|
| Thanks very much.
|
| Alan
|

NTFS or FAT32 ?

As I indicated in my original post, both drives are NTFS.

 

[JS]

Click Start/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk
Management.
Do you see the drive listed, if so click on the drive letter and then right
click and select the 'Properties' Option.
Down near the bottom of the drive properties window you should see a check
box labeled:
'Compress drive to save disk space',
check the box and then click 'Apply',
Now you should see options to: compress only files in the root or root and
all subfolders.

JS

 

[JS]

Click Start/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk
Management.
Do you see the drive listed, if so click on the drive letter and then right
click and select the 'Properties' Option.
Down near the bottom of the drive properties window you should see a check
box labeled:
'Compress drive to save disk space',
check the box and then click 'Apply',
Now you should see options to: compress only files in the root or root and
all subfolders.

JS

 

[Alan Foxmore]

Click Start/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk
Management.
Do you see the drive listed, if so click on the drive letter and then
right
click and select the 'Properties' Option.
Down near the bottom of the drive properties window you should see a check
box labeled:
'Compress drive to save disk space',
check the box and then click 'Apply',
Now you should see options to: compress only files in the root or root and
all subfolders.

The dialog window you are referring to is the same one you see if you
right-click the drive in Explorer. There's no need to into "Disk Manager".

At any rate, that dialog window does not have the option to compress the
drive. I posted a screen shot of the dialog window in my previous post. You
will see the option is not present.

 

[JS]

Only other thing I know of is that compression option may require a cluster
size of 4k (default) when formatting.

Karen's Disk Slack Checker v2.5.2
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptslack.asp

JS

 

[Carl Kaufmann]

Hi everyone,

I'm an administrator on my XP Pro SP2 machine.

I have a hard drive attached to my machine via a USB 2.0 drive enclosure
(I'm not sure if this fact is even relevant). I can use the drive with no
problems. When I right click on the drive letter and view properties,
"General" tab, I see I do *not* have the option of compressing this drive
for some reason.

Oddly, I have a second hard drive attached to the same machine via another
drive enclosure and this drive *does* have the option to compress.

Both drives are NTFS.

Can someone offer some insight as to why the one drive cannot be compressed?

Thanks very much.

Alan

Since they are both NTFS, my guess is that it is a cluster size
issue. Compression can be enabled only with cluster sizes of 4 KiB
or less.

Carl