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Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by night_link
on 2007-06-10 19:20:16
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With Windows XP (dunno about Vista), there's be an option where you right-click the My Computer and there's an option that says "Compress drive to save disk space." Does it really help at all to select it? I've done it with my older computers but would like to know. How do computers slow down after time? Even if games were installed and later uninstalled, it still doesn't run the same speed to me. If a game were installed on an external drive, and run on a labtop, would the labtop run at same speed after ejecting the drive? |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by
on 2007-06-12 04:39:30 |
Try Defragmenting your drive.  |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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When you select it, your harddisk isn't compressed directly. But when you copy something to it while the checkbox checked, The file will be compressed and show in blue color. If you want the harddisk to compress at that time, you have to select all folder in your disk, right-click, properties, advanced, and then compress it. Compressing your disk will make your disk run slower, at least that what I think, because Windows have to decompress it whenever you need the file. |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by
on 2007-06-13 03:16:49 |
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So it's recommended not to compress the drive? |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by
on 2007-06-14 04:31:13 (edited 2007-06-14 04:33:39)
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It is not recommended to Compress your drive. * If you compress your drive, there is a possibility to lost one of your files during drive compression. * Another thing, it compress your files saved in your hard disk. When you saw your drive (example: Drive C) after compression, the full capacity of your hard disk adds 50% of its normal/uncompressed capacity. Actually, your files is being compressed, not the hard disk boosted its capacity. Illustration: Total Capacity = 5 GB >---Compress the Disk Drive---> Total Capacity = 7.5 GB Free Space = 3 GB >---Compress the Disk Drive---> Free Space = 4.5 Actually, all the files bytes (saved and to be save) are reduce to 50% (it's like zipped), not the hard disk that added 50% capacity. * Due to the files is compressed (like a ZIP Files), the computer can't clearly read the file, so it can be said the hard disk is running slow (as puppypup said). This pressures the disk to read the files. * If the compression system was bugged or have some technical error due to Windows abnormallity or sudden changes by a virus, incorrect updates, or some sort of those, the files that are compress can't be read, so...bye-bye files, unless you can repair it. Actually, I always used disk compression, but I dislike it after the disk compression system can't run or execute. I lost some files. So, it is recommended to not use disk compression. And for Shin Sawada: Defragmenting your hard drive arrange the clusters of your hard disk. It arrange the used clusters, free/unused clusters and other clusters in order so that the hard disk will run smooth and can easily run/ read files. If you combined it with disk compression, it will not actually speed up your hard disk reading ability also. Defragment also have no concern to disk compression. |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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on 2007-06-14 04:51:58 |
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Maybe i'll decompress my drive... thankies, Ruy.... |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by
on 2007-06-14 05:02:00 (edited 2007-06-14 05:02:37)
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| Walang anuman. OK lang yun! Hehehehe! |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by
on 2007-06-17 11:37:05 |
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About your computer slowing down over time, click run on the start menu and type "msconfig" and check the startup tab. I'd uncheck any of the stuff that isn't under a windows directory or that I don't recognize.
Beware the quiet people,
You don't know their intentions
(small signatures are sooo much cooler since they don't annoy people trying to read through posts!) |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by
on 2007-06-17 18:46:04 |
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since Ruy answered the first question, might as well tell you the answer to your second question: How do computers slow down after time? Even if games were installed and later uninstalled, it still doesn't run the same speed to me. If a game were installed on an external drive, and run on a labtop, would the labtop run at same speed after ejecting the drive? The reason why it slow down after time is also due to the rubbish found in the registry after uninstalling. The uninstaller only uninstall the files for the game/software, but it does not remove what it wrote in the registry. Cleaning up the registry does help in speeding up the laptop since it removes those unwanted files(i recommend doing this once a week). Also, if you were to install the game at an external drive, the PC won't exactly run at the same speed, since it has written a few lines in the registry as well. The shortcuts created at the start menu and desktop will also 'search' for the link to your external hard-drive once it's ejected, so you'll lose a little bit of speed there, although its barely noticeable. |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by
on 2007-06-18 18:22:16 |
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And the other reason for a loss in speed (this in combination with what Kay said) comes from fragmentation in your hard drive. Every time you install something your computer uses the first available segments of your hard drive that are available, and when you delete them it frees it up. For example, pretend you have a 300MB file, a 400MB file, and a 200MB file, in that order on your hard drive. Eventually you delete the 400MB file, so now that segment of your hard drive is open. Then you decide to put on a 700MB file in its place, so your computer uses the 400MB freed from the earlier deleted file to write only the first 400MB of the 700MB file and writes the remaining 300MB in the next free area of your hard drive after the 200MB file. This breakup in the 700MB file is an example of what is called fragmentation. Over time as you put on more stuff and delete more stuff (especially when you delete things that have been on your hard drive for a long time) the files you add become more and more fragmented as your computer uses the first available sectors to write to. As a result, this fragmentation makes your hard drive take MUCH longer to find, assemble, and transmit information to the rest of your computer, and can cause your system to bog down ALOT. In short, if you're a light user, I'd recommend defragmenting at least once a month (open "my computer", right-click the hard drive, click properties, click the "tools" tab, and then run the defragmenter), otherwise if you use your comp alot do it weekly.
Beware the quiet people,
You don't know their intentions
(small signatures are sooo much cooler since they don't annoy people trying to read through posts!) |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by
on 2007-06-18 19:23:38 |
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I read somewhere(I think it was from a Cnet newsletter), that not many people defrag their NTFS hard disks since the speed and performance doesn't really drop, unlike a FAT32, but like h4x0r said, defragmenting your hard disks will help in many ways. Another tip is to perform an Error Check on your hard disks. Doing disk error checks not only help recover bad sectors in your hard disks, you might even recover hard disk space (I still remember the shock I got when I did a disk error check a few months back...I recovered about 2 gigs of space O_O) and also make your hard disk perform better. I also recommend that you defrag and do disk error checks at least once a month. Doing a registry cleanup once or twice a week is also recommended. Oh yea, I almost forget to mention. Another reason why it slows down also is probably due to adwares, spywares and viruses. Doing an adware and spyware scan once a week is is recommended as well. As for the viruses, you can do it once every two weeks. You might want to do the defrag and error check during dinner or bath time or during bedtime, same goes with the adware, spyware and virus scans. You wouldn't want to sit down infront of the screen and wait for everything to finish now do you? Another thing, you don't have to do all of these at one shot. You can do it at different time intervals or days, whichever suits you best ;). |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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on 2007-06-27 04:17:15 |
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Defraging the hard disk can also improve the performance of a PC. But there is some instances that can become a threat. I never defrag my hard disk since I encounter this problem. I think defragment is cool because it can improve my PCs performance by 4-5%. But sometimes after I defrag it again (5 months after the past defrag) my Boot Record have bug, I can't start my OS because of that. And when I use Defrag again in other time, the Sector 0 can't be used. I almost lost some files. NTFS Partitioned Disk is not recommended to defrag because of some sort of circumstances. But the most fatal disadvantage about defragmentation is it wears your hard disk. It just lessens the life span of the hard disk. So if you want to defrag your hard disk, better defrag it once a year (not once a month). I also use a software that auto-arrange the clusters in my hard disk while I'm writting, moving, copying, and deleting files. Somehow, the hard disk now a days is moch more faster (example: SATA) than the hard disk before, so defragment is now rarely used today. |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by
on 2007-07-13 13:37:05 |
Since you guys are talking about computer clean up, what computer components heavily affect your computer speed. Further "registry clean up" could anyone explain, how I can do that? I'm into computers a lot but i dont really know about what makes `em tick. 
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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Registry cleanup can be done with 3rd party programs like TuneUpUtilities, or, if you know what values are written during installation, you can remove them manually with regedit ( not recommended). When you install programs in your comp, apart from copying files to your HD, the installer often writes to your system registry as part of the installation ( stuff like file associations are done by editing the registry).Unfortunately, inmost cases when you uninstall a program the uninstaller does not remove all of the registry values it created during installation. This leaves your registry to be long and filled with garbage, slowing down your PC. About what stuff that affects speed, it is multifactorial and I'd like to think in terms of hardware and software. Hardware wise, the key IMO is RAM amount. CPU speed only matters in gaming or more so in video editing, while graphics is mostly for games. I'm not very sure about harddrive performance, but it should have little, if any, difference unless you're running a server.Software settings include your OS settings ( example: memory allocation scheme and proc scheduling), HD fragmentation ( esp. pagefile fragmentation), amount of programs at startup,registry settings, etc. |
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Re: Compressing hard drive to save space and other Q's
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by
on 2007-07-19 16:23:15 |
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Wow, I learned a lot from reading those two paragraphs above ^_^
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