I guess this is sort of on topic because it involves a new hard disk for a
home-built computer.
I'm using Windows XP Home SP1. I recently used the Disk Cleanup utility in
System Tools, and in addition to most of the other checkboxes that are
selected by default, I went ahead and checked the "Compress old files"
option just to see what it would do. (That's the way I am.) I thought that
it *deleted* "compressed old files" but I see now that it actually
*compresses* old files! <sigh>
Anyhow, when I saw what it was doing, I stopped the process. It was taking
too long and I wasn't sure what effect having a bunch of compressed files on
my hard disk would have on performance (because presumably Windows would
have to decompress them every time some program needed to access them).
Everything was working fine until I purchased a new hard disk and tried to
use the latest version of PowerQuest's DriveCopy. It would stop with "too
many files errors." After a few minutes of tinkering, I discovered that I
could turn off file checking and let DriveCopy do its thing, disregarding
everything it thinks is a "file error."
The story has a happy ending and everything works fine now--I love the quiet
new WD drive with its 8 MB cache!--but I'd like to undo the compressed file
thing to prevent future problems. Does anyone know how I would go about
doing that?
