compressing files?

hollyhamill

i know there is a way to compress files to save space,
but how do you do it and what is it usually used for?
i have alot of photos and music on my pc would it be good for that?

thanx!

aidan_walsh

what is it usually used for?

compress files to save space

Question, answer.

If you're using one of the XP varieties, and your drive is formatted as NTFS (it'll tell you if thats the file system, the other one you can have if FAT32 but that won't work for this) you can right click on the drive and set it to compress all your files. Tell it to do this to all your files, including subdirectories, and it should help save you a load of room on your drive with very little hit in performance.

hollyhamill

ok but can i access them just as easily ?

or should i do it ONLY to files i dont need to use as much?

thanx

aidan_walsh

If you want to compress the entire file system, you won't have to change how you access them at all. Windows will do that behind the scenes for you.

If you decide to compress only files you don't use often, you'll have to get an archiver package like PKZip, WinZip, WinRAR, or 7z (the latest, offering very high compression rates), which will add everything to a new file you will have to open to get your compressed files out of.

hollyhamill

ok here is where i get really annoying . sorry in advance , when you say click on the drive you mean click on . . .. . ?

Capt'n Midnight

Unless your pictures are BMP and your music files are WAV's chances are your photos and music files are already in a compressed format and won't shrink much.

Word documents and stuff like that do compress a lot though.

Karoma

hollyhamill wrote:

ok here is where i get really annoying . sorry in advance , when you say click on the drive you mean click on . . .. . ?

http://www.dparker.net/compress/compression.html

(sorry-did it very quickly...)

It won't save a huge amount -but every bit can help.
You won't have to do anything after enabling it - it's 'transparent'. i.e. Access the files as normal...

Karoma

Textual way:
Double-click (left mouse button) on My Computer.
Right-click (once) on the Hard Disk Drive (Usually C: )
Left-click (once) on Properties
Tick the Compression option at the bottom
Apply / OK

Standard Toaster

^^^

Do not do that. You would be crazy to compress a drive/partition that likey has the OS installed on it. It's just going to slow the access times down.
You better off compressing files that are not accessed alot....not system files.

hollyhamill, if you have XP and the drive's formatted with NTFS (default) then right click the folder where you have your files stored & click 'properties'.
Goto Advanced and tick the box "Compress contents to save disk space"

Hit Apply and Ok.Here's a buch of word docs I compressed you give an idea:



You milage will vary depending on what type of files you compressing. (Video, pictures, text, sound, etc)

As already said, files that are already compressed (MP3, video, jpg images) will not compress as well as say text.

Karoma

It'd slow things down alright-but not by too much on a decent spec. machine (&it can be undone and applied to individual folders if the effect is undesirable - it was easier to demonstrate & what someone else said...)

Sam Vimes

disk cleanup (start->programs->accessories->system tools->disk cleanup) has exactly the option you're looking for, "compress old files"