compressing files

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lisa Go
  • Start date Start date
L

Lisa Go

Should I compress files, and if so, what is the criteria
for which files are ok to compress and which ones should
never be touched?
Thanks again,
Lisa
 
Hi Lisa,

Unless you are pressed for disk space, I would not recommend compressing any
files. There is a chance of corruption when the files are compressed and
expanded. In addition, it takes time to expand the files when they are
needed, therefore slowing performance.

FWIW, JAX
 
There are some advantages for compression
- safety if you compress w/ a password,
- size on media - say, very unlikely, you have a 16MB Thumb Drive and files
greater than that
- sometimes, you actually might gain some speed (ex. in a fast CPU/slow HDD
system) depending on compression ratio.
- huge network traffic where a few MB can save some bandwith.

Other than that, compression is obsolite - was usefull in small HDD, floppy
disks, and slow dialup connection times.
Michael
 
There are some advantages for compression
- safety if you compress w/ a password,
- size on media - say, very unlikely, you have a 16MB Thumb Drive and files
greater than that
- sometimes, you actually might gain some speed (ex. in a fast CPU/slow HDD
system) depending on compression ratio.
- huge network traffic where a few MB can save some bandwith.

Other than that, compression is obsolite - was usefull in small HDD, floppy
disks, and slow dialup connection times.
Michael
Click to expand...


NTFS Compression is great for odd data. I've had to store huge
Gigs/day numeric data that compressed about 20:1. With that kind of
compression I was getting an effective 400MB/sec read rate off the
raid array. An extreme case, yes, but I'm glad NTFS compression is
there.

Don't mess around with setting the compression bit in individual
files. Compress folders. I always set compression on TEMP folders. It
can't hurt.

I have set compression on C:/ and all subdirectories on hundreds of
machines. The only thing that slowed up bu compression is SQL or
acess databases that have data inserted. This would't screw up, it
would just run very slowly.
 
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