A type of data compression that works by storing compressed versions of files on the hard disk. A disk compression utility sits between the operating system and the disk drive. Whenever the operating system attempts to save a file to disk, the utility intercepts it and compresses it. Likewise, when the operating system attempts to open a file, the disk compression utility intercepts the file, decompresses it, and then passes it to the operating system. Because all applications access files through the operating system, disk compression utilities work with all applications. The entire process is transparent to the user, though opening and closing files may take a little longer. On the other hand, a disk compression utility can double the amount of disk space available.
There are two ways that you can compress your disk. One is to compress old files and the other is to compress the whole hard disk. The following is how to compress the hard disk:
Compress old files:
1. Right-click the drive to be compressed.
2. Click Properties.
3. Click Disk Cleanup.
4. The system will automatically compress the old files for you.
Compress the whole hard disk:
1. Right-click the drive to be compressed.
2. Click Properties.
3. Click the checkbox "Compress drive to save disk space".
Warning:
1. Hard disk compression will save space, but it will have some performance impact.
2. If a compressed drive crashes, there is little to no way to recover the data in the compressed drive. So before doing the compression, you need to do the backup first.
