DJS0302 said:
Disk cleanup says I have 120,000 KB of old files that it can compress. I have
three questions in regards to this.
1. Will I notice any slowdown or hangups if I compress these files?
As you have not been using them, you should not notice - they will
uncompress transparently if you need to use them
2. Are these compressed files more likely to become corrupted than if I had
left them uncompressed? No
3. Can I reverse the process and uncompress these files if I so choose?
Yes. They will show up in Explorer with the names distinct in Blue.
You can r-click one, tale Properties, click the Advanced button and
uncheck the 'Compress' box. You can compress folders of your own choice
in a similar way. If you do let Disk Cleanup do it, I would immediately
check that the hidden files in the root of C:, that the system needs at
boot, have *not* been compressed. And never let anything compress the
whole windows folder or the whole windows\system32 and its subfolders
except as noted below
Personally I would do it myself, selectively. There is no point in
trying to compress multimedia files (MP3 RM WMV and the like) or
photos (JPG or GIF) - they are already compressed as far as maybe.
Windows\ServicePackFiles is an example of a folder that repays
compression as is windows\system32\dllcache
These are used only when System file protection needs to restore a
damaged file.
