Does "Compress Drive to save disk space" help?

[Stoney]

Hi. The subject line in this post pretty much says it all, but I'll fill in
some details. I just installed a new HD in my Windows XP Pro system. I just
installed the OS, and no updates yet, but I'll get to that. I was just
wondering if I use the "Compress drive to save disk space" option in the
"Local Disk C Properties" on the "General" tab, if that will cause
applications to lag because they're installed compressed, or if it will all
work just as smoothly. Any helpful info will be greatly appreciated. Thanks
so much, and God bless America!

Stoney

 

[Joel Rubin]

Hi. The subject line in this post pretty much says it all, but I'll fill in
some details. I just installed a new HD in my Windows XP Pro system. I just
installed the OS, and no updates yet, but I'll get to that. I was just
wondering if I use the "Compress drive to save disk space" option in the
"Local Disk C Properties" on the "General" tab, if that will cause
applications to lag because they're installed compressed, or if it will all
work just as smoothly. Any helpful info will be greatly appreciated. Thanks
so much, and God bless America!

It may cost some time.

Also, some files are already compressed and, if anything, expand a bit
when run through a compressing program.

For example, way back when I was using things like Stacker and Double
Space I found that zip files and ra (Real Audio) files took up as much
real disk space on compressed drives as they did on uncompressed
files.

A bitmap graphic and a text file will probably compress the most.

 

[SlowJet]

If you partitioned your hard disk to have a good fit for your XP sys/boot
partition and then have room for one or more other partitions, then

Leave the XP sys/boot partition unchecked for compression, and check the
others.
The NTFS file system will automatically compress files.
The compact command without any parms will display the compression ratio of
a folder.
Since many programs and download files are compressed the compression ratio
will be 1.3-1.6 not 1.7-1.9.

I would only compress the sys/boot partition if space was really a factor
and the cpu was very new and fast (> 2.4 HT )
If the sys/boot is keep small in realtionship to the disk size then there
would be no need.

SJ

 

[Jone Doe]

Hi. The subject line in this post pretty much says it all, but I'll fill
in
some details. I just installed a new HD in my Windows XP Pro system. I
just
installed the OS, and no updates yet, but I'll get to that. I was just
wondering if I use the "Compress drive to save disk space" option in the
"Local Disk C Properties" on the "General" tab, if that will cause
applications to lag because they're installed compressed, or if it will
all
work just as smoothly. Any helpful info will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
so much, and God bless America!

Stoney

Compressing files to save space is a little like empying the ash trays to
save weight in the automobile.

 

[Stoney]

Thanks a bunch. I appreciate every answer, but yours made the most sense to
me. Thanks again!

Stoney

 

[hiryu]

Hi. The subject line in this post pretty much says it all, but I'll
fill in some details. I just installed a new HD in my Windows XP Pro
system. I just installed the OS, and no updates yet, but I'll get to
that. I was just wondering if I use the "Compress drive to save disk
space" option in the "Local Disk C Properties" on the "General" tab,
if that will cause applications to lag because they're installed
compressed, or if it will all work just as smoothly. Any helpful info
will be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much, and God bless America!


Stoney

It would save space only if the drive contain lots of very small files or
contains uncompressed files eg program file but not the one like in Zip
RAR JPG GIF these files are compressed.

For the case of small file, there is minimum space the file occupied, no
matter the how small the file size is, in an uncompressed drive.
eg. in the drive that the cluster size is 32K, a file will take minimum
of 32K bytes or multiple of 32K bytes, even if the actual file size is 1
byte. In the compressed drive, this limitation is overcome. The space is
fully used. That's why if you check the compression ratio of files with
small file size, the ratio is very high.
NB I never try the XP compression, but for stacker or doublespace, this
is the case.

Also, generally it will slow down the program running.

Theoretically, in some very rare occasion, if the drive you compressed is
very slow and you have a fast processor, it could increase the speed
because less data thus less time is needed to transfer in/out of the slow
drive and the time saved is more than the time to compress/uncompress the
data.

 

[André Gulliksen]

For the case of small file, there is minimum space the file occupied, no
matter the how small the file size is, in an uncompressed drive.
eg. in the drive that the cluster size is 32K, a file will take minimum
of 32K bytes or multiple of 32K bytes, even if the actual file size is 1
byte. In the compressed drive, this limitation is overcome. The space is
fully used. That's why if you check the compression ratio of files with
small file size, the ratio is very high.
NB I never try the XP compression, but for stacker or doublespace, this
is the case.

Stacker/Doublespace and NTFS compression are two completely different
beasts.

Stacker and Doublespace worked by creating a logical filesystem into one
single file, which is hosted by a FAT(32) partition. Thus the entire drive
would be stored as one single file, removing the slack used by files with
sizes that are not multiples of the cluster size.

Under NTFS the compression is done on a file-by-file basis. So an 8 kB file
compressed to 5 kB on a filesystem with 4 kB clusters will still occupy 8 kB
on the file system.