How to Compress OS Drive and Files to Save Disk Space | Win 10

If the Hard Disk doesn’t have a lot of space left, you can compress os drive to save disk space, NTFS drive, files, and folders to save the disk space. 

Windows allows you to compress files and folders with a one-click so that hard disk could be free somewhat.

If you enable the compression on a file, Windows compress that file using a data compression algorithm, this reduces the file size, thereby filing less space on the disk.

What does compressing do?

The Data Compression algorithm encodes the information of the file in fewer bits; this reduces the number of bits in a file, thereby reduces the file size too. 

When you re access the file, then Windows first decompress the data before you access the file.

Compressing and decompression consume hardware resources, thus if you open a compressed file, then first it is decompressed, then you can read. Reading a large compressed file requires more time and consumes processing power too.

If you have some files and programs on Windows that you don’t use frequently, you can enable compression on these files and save the disk space.

In this guide, we will walk you through the steps to enable compression on files and folders.

Enable Compression on Files and Folder

Earlier “Compress Old Files” option was present in the Disk cleanup utility, during the Windows 7, Microsoft decided to remove this option. There were some disadvantages to this; hence Microsoft removed this option.

Windows had no way to identify which file is old and hasn’t been accessed for a particular period; therefore, removing the “Compress Old Files” option was the right decision.

How to compress a files and folders

Compressing the files or folders is quite easy on Windows 10, and 8,7. Here’s how to compress Windows files and folders.

• Right-click the file or folder which you want to enable compression for.

• Select the properties.

• On the General tab, click the Advanced… option.

• Under the “Compress or Encrypt attributes, check the option.

• Click the OK, then Apply.

To confirm whether compression is enabled, check two blue arrow icon on the upper right-hand side of the file icon. This tells you that this folder has been compressed to save the disk space.

How to compress OS Drive or NTFS Drive

Instead of enabling compression on each folder, respectively, you can allow compression to the entire drive if you wish to compress all files. Enabling the compression on the drive enables compression on subfolders and data too.

• Right-click the drive which you want to enable compression on.

• Select the properties.

• Under the General tab, check the option “Compress this drive to save disk space”.

• Click the Apply, then select Apply changes to this Driver and subfolders.

• Then Ok.

Now, you can open the drive and ensure whether compression is enabled on all the sub-folders and files.

Should I compress my os Drive?

You should never compress the C: drive or OS drive where Windows is installed, this may cause a lot of problems. 

You may encounter errors while installing programs and drivers, and compressing the Windows folder could cause Windows to not boot.

Website : https://smarttechnicalworld.com/compress-os-drive-to-save-disk-space/

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