Compress C:\

[yakis]

Hi All,
Can I compress my C:\ drive (system drive) and keep my system stable with
the compress C:\? I am running with low disk space on C:\.
My OS : Windows XP Pro SP2 running MASP and NAV2005.
Thanks
yakis

 

[David Candy]

Certainly. But don't compress the boot files in C:\ as there is no uncompress available untill they load. So you won't be able to boot if you do.

Perhaps you should use Disk Cleanup's Compress Old Files which will compress files not used in last two months. If you have more than one partition move the swap file to where you have space. Disable hibernation if you don't use it. Reduce size of Temporary Internet Files as it is probably set to a size far too big (which means it stops working as well) to 20 or so Mbyte (and do it for each user).

 

[Manny Borges]

Don't compress the drive.
Entire drivecompression went out with Stacker in 96 becase decomression adn
compression happens fo every file used and take CPU time.
C: typically holds your OS, so compressing this is a uge performance hit..

Hardrives are cheap enough, and a better solution.

 

[yakis]

Yeah, that's what I thought, just wanted to have some confirmation, thank
you both for your kind help.
Cheers,
yakis

 

[Al Dykes]

Hi All,
Can I compress my C:\ drive (system drive) and keep my system stable with
the compress C:\? I am running with low disk space on C:\.
My OS : Windows XP Pro SP2 running MASP and NAV2005.
Thanks
yakis

I've done it to hundreds of systems circa NT4 and never had a problem.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

Don't compress the drive.
Entire drivecompression went out with Stacker in 96 becase
decomression adn compression happens fo every file used and
take CPU
time. C: typically holds your OS, so compressing this is a uge
performance
hit..

Although it takes CPU time to compress and uncompress the files,
on the other hand the compressed files are smaller and take less
time to read and write. So there's a tradeoff. Which of the two
factors is more significant depends on the realtive speeds of the
CPU and disk drive, but on most modern systems, it's a near wash,
and there isn't a big difference either way.

I would never choose to compress a drive if I had any reasonable
choice, but for an entirely different reason. All the files on a
compressed drive are essentially in a single file and if anything
happens to that file (either hardware or software corruption),
*all* its contents are lost. That's too big a risk for me.

 

[Manny Borges]

The small compressed files are faster to read is a common misconception.

The file is read, uncompressed, and then is typically written back in its
full size to the swap file while using it. So you are actually reading and
writing more than before.

Another misconception is that your files WILL compress.
Many file formats that take large amounts of space are already compressed.
MP3 Mpeg AVI etc...
In fact compressing them can actually make them grow.
I once ran hard compression on 3.2 GBs of MPEGS. Apox 250 files of a tech
conferance. After 2 hours of proccessing I gained a whopping 120 MBs of
space.

Compression is really only useful on a file or folder level basis and on
files that take compression well, like txt, doc, ppt etc....

 

[Manny Borges]

So you used doublespace, drivespace or Stacker.

So you must have run into the issue that when a drive is uncompressed during
backup or just for fun, the entire drive contents becomes corrupted if one
of the files decompressed exceeds the whole drives actual storage
limitation? Typical on a worksation or server that utilized huge text files.
Like a system holding old school logon scripts.

The first time I had that happen to me and I lost a 420MB drives data (don't
laugh, that was huge drive then) was the last time.

 

[Al Dykes]

The small compressed files are faster to read is a common misconception.

The file is read, uncompressed, and then is typically written back in its
full size to the swap file while using it. So you are actually reading and
writing more than before.

I don't think you are talking about NTFS.

NTFS compression works fine. As someone else posted, it's probably to
uncompress ntldr and the other boot files in the boot partition root.

How much you get out of deppents on your data.