if i select "compress drive to save disk space" does this have any adverse affect?

Question

i been getting lower and lower on my C drive so i've started to compress. it says it won't finish for 1 day 2 hours or so, which is fine. when it does finish though does the drive act any differently in any way. is file sharing effected...really does anything AT ALL negatively affect performance because i wouldn't hesitate to just buy a bigger drive. REALLY appreciate this thanks.

Answer 1

Disk wide file compression will impact drive performance, but unless you are very low on disk space it should be negligible.



The drive compression built into Windows is intelligent enough to avoid compressing critical system files, files that are accessed very frequently and other areas of the disk that would impact performance greatly.



The best option is to buy a larger hard drive, but there is nothing wrong with trying out compression until you do.

Answer 2

This is a great thing for large files that are not frequently used.

There is an overhead involved, so if you have low CPU power

and compress every little thing you may notice the slow down.

In general, the NTFS compression is very good at saving space

and in highly optimized for minimum CPU overhead.

There are some things that you cannot, or would not want to,

compress - such as executables and system files.

Note that compression and EFS are mutually exclusive, you

may use only one of them on any specific file.

Answer 3

What will be adversely impacted is speed. Once compressed the system will have to decompress any information it accesses on the hard drive before it can be used. While this may not be overly significant with many actions, it will exist. I prefer to expand my drive space with an External USB hard drive.



I Hope this Helps!

Answer 4

unless you really haven't kept your computer in good shape, clearing cookies, temporary internet files, etc, regularly, you really won't notice a big change in space.



the fact that it's taking that long means you either have a really slow computer or you have a LOT of extra stuff that is being compressed.



nothing harmful will happen by compressing your drive, but in the end, you'll want to add a secondary drive for storage.

Answer 5

honestly compressing the hard drive isn't worth it.

the space you do gain is a trade off because your computer will take a performance hit

compression makes your hard drive work harder to find and save things to the disc.

buying a larger hard drive is much easier and the space you'll gain is tremendous.

Answer 6

No I dont think there will be any negative effect on performance of ur pc

Answer 7

It will be {slightly} slower. I would try it before buying a new drive.