The default Microsoft utility warns me to make back up copies first, before I compress. Yeah, sure, how am I gonna do that for a couple of gigabytes without a Zip drive? Is this really necessary?
And, BTW, the same utility promises me an extra gigabyte of space on ‘H’. Will access to this virtual(?) drive be seamless? For example, will download files automatically go there when ‘C’ is full? Will they be seamlessly available?
Many thanks.
Karl
I definitely would not do it without backing up first. Also, from experience I can tell you a compressed drive slows down your computer substantially. Seeing the price of drives I would much rather buy another one unless you are absolutely desperate.
Agreed. Disk compression is a very bad idea in general. Worse when you consider how cheap hard drives are now. You can get 10 gigs for under $100 these days…
Oh man… disk compression is just such a bad idea… just about everyone I know who has done it has lived to regret it.
Disk Compression is a throwback from the Golden Age of Personal Computers (the '80s, of course), where a 5-MEGAbyte hard drive would cost you a thousand bucks or more. Nowadays, I’d imagine that Disk Compression would be used if you have an extra computer lying around that’s used only to archive old documents/files, where one could have hundreds of gigs on hand.
For the average person, I’d say to just buy another hard drive. As was said above, they’re dirt-cheap.
I’ve done it a couple of times (on laptops, where it was difficult/impossible to get another hard drive), with no problems. It did slow down file access quite a bit. At the time, you could individually select files to not be compressed- I did that for files I used frequently, and that helped with speed. I don’t think you can do that with the latest Windows compression software.
On the other hand, I considered that a last-ditch effort, and made complete backups first. You greatly increase the odds of a windows crash corrupting a file (or the entire disk!), when it ordinarily would have been harmless. Also, if the disk does somehow get corrupted, and you have to boot off a floppy, re-install windows, etc., you’re much more likely to loose all your data, so you should keep regular backups of modified files after you do the compression.
It’s nice to back up your entire hard drive, but you might get away with just backing your data files, knowing that you can re-install any software if you need to (warning- it’s not always obvious what your “data files” are).
Arjuna34
Gotta agree: far cheaper and more effective to buy a new hard drive. Hell, I saw 30GB hard drives for UNDER $200 last I looked.
Just looked again. Ho-ly mackerel.
here’s a 30GB drive for $161. And, of course, smaller capacities are less expensive.
Thank you. I will take your collective advice!
A followup question, then: How do I retain the contents of my current hard drive if I get a new, bigger one?
You read the manual that comes with the new HD & it explains how to copy the old one to the new one.
The guys didn’t ask you what operating system you have but you better find out cause some of them don’t support anything after 2 gigs.
Also, you probably just need to clean out some old files to make room. Run scandisk & defrag.
The fact that Opal knows people who attempted to compress their hard drive and didn’t live to regret it is reason enough to avoid doing so.
hell, dont worry about how to keep files from the old HDD – keep them both – the vast majority of towers can accept 2 HDDs at the same time.