Hello.
I'm running out of disk space and winsxs is already taking a lot of
space. I already know that I should leave it alone.
I was just wondering if is it advisable to set this folder to compress
It *should* be fine, but in practice you may have to work around
unanticipated bugs.
Every regular on NTFS file can be considered to be a single "hardlink"
to a piece of data. You can have multiple hardlinks, which is like
having the same file in two places with just the cost of the extra
link and not the data. The "." and ".." directories? Just hardlinks to
the current directory and the parent directory.
winsxs is full of files that are installed as components, typically of
Windows and other Microsoft software. When these featured are
"installed" into a particular location, what actually happens is that
a new link (a hardlink) is created to the file data. This is one
reason why Vista can only be installed on NTFS - it makes prolific use
of hardlinks.
The files being hardlinks has obvious repercussions - you're not just
compressing the install media, but the sole copies of the actual files
that make up Windows. If you compress them, part of what you are
compressing consists of installed files - or files that you may
install later. And Windows (or other applications) doesn't always
anticipate getting a compressed file.
For example, Vista will choke if you try to install IIS's shared
libraries and its XML schema files in winsxs are compressed. They're
probably checking that it still has the read-only attribute and forgot
to allow for the presence of other attributes. Personally, I consider
this a bug, but either way, it's a risk that you need to be aware of.
