Windows XP Hacks

Get More Hard Disk Space by Using NTFS Compression

The quickest and easiest way to give your system more room is to use XP’s built-in compression scheme for NTFS disks. Here’s how to use it—and how to convert your existing disk to NTFS if it doesn’t already use it.

If you need more hard disk space, don’t buy another hard disk right away. First, consider using NTFS (NT File System) compression, which can give significantly more hard disk space by compressing all the files on your PC. NTFS’s on-the-fly compression capabilities can shrink the size of individual files and folders, or entire drives. When you use it, the files or folders will be compressed when they’re on your hard disk to save space, but they will be decompressed automatically when you use them, and then compressed again when stored on your hard disk. This means that, unlike with a compression program such as WinZip (http://www.winzip.com), you don’t have to deal with decompressing as well as compressing files. You can also easily turn compression on and off.

Note that NTFS compression isn’t available with a FAT32 filesystem, so if you have a FAT32 system you’ll first have to convert to NTFS, as explained later in this hack. If you’re not sure which filesystem your volume uses, right-click on your volume in Explorer, choose Properties → General, and look for the information next to File System.

How much disk space can you save by using NTFS compression? That depends largely on the kinds of files you have on your system. ...