New Partition Wizard

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Guest

In the wizard there is an option - 'enable file and folder compression on
NTFS' - what is the purpose of the option when checked?

I've created a partition (NTFS) with the option unchecked and it appears
that I can still manually compress files and folders. Is the purpose of that
option to cause automatic file and folder compression based on some
undocumented conditions?

At the very least, it would be nice if that feature was documented and
defined somewhere - I can't find any.
 
Hi,

The option automatically compresses everything placed on that drive. This
feature was useful when drive space was limited and new drives were
expensive. It is not so much a concern now, but the option still exists.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
With hard drives getting larger and larger there is no need to compress the
whole drive. I can't really understand why this option still remains. I
remember using the disk compression with Windows 95 and boy did it slow down
the system.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
http://vistasupport.mvps.org

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John said:
With hard drives getting larger and larger there is no need to
compress the whole drive. I can't really understand why this option
still remains. I remember using the disk compression with Windows 95
and boy did it slow down the system.
Click to expand...

....
The effects of NTFS compression are nearly negligible except with very large
files and even then it's barely noticeable. This compression isn't the old
drivespace et al; things have come a long ways since 95.
One of the best uses for such compression is on the data disks, especially
if space is at a premium as in , say, the data disk turns out to be the old
boot disk.

To the OP:
It is not necessary to compress the whole drive though; after things are
running you can compress any folder or areas you wish to compress. The
compression/decompression is done on the fly and thus isn't really
noticeable. I have certain data I keep in compressed folders just because
the ratio is in the area of 90%/file, which saves an incredible amount of
space on the drive.
With less space used, defrag and many other functions run much faster as
there is less data to mover around, it seems. Imaging is also faster.
 
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