does compressing all files on my pc have any outcomes besides reducing space used?particularly program files?

Answer 1

The poster above me has it nailed. Compressing program files is never a good idea because it'll slow your PC right down to a crawl--and if you really look at the size difference between, say, a ZIPed file and one that's uncompressed, the size difference is quite small, anyway.

On the other hand, your best bet for saving disk space is to get rid of or compress media files if you have any lying around. If you store music on your computer in WAV format, use Windows Media Player (assuming that you're using Windows) to pack 'em down into MP3s. Most people don't notice a difference between the original song and one that's shrunk down to 192KBs... yet the size difference is enormous! Downloaded video files can be recompressed as DIVX or MPEG4 files--most of the time without loosing too much detail (although, sometimes not). Check out Doom9.net for details on video and audio compression if that interests you.

Uninstall old games you never play--especially if you still have them on disk somewhere, and can simply reinstall them when the urge to play hits you again.

Or--and this is my favorite--upgrade to a larger hard drive. Even if you're like me and tend to process tons of video footage, today's 400GB-750GB hard drives are monsterous, not to mention fast. And prices are getting down right decent on them, to boot! Check out Newegg.com before visiting your local retailer, and chances are you'll see something that'll meet your needs. You most of the time don't even need to uninstall your old hard drive--just "slave" your larger drive off of it, and use the new drive for normal old storage files. Messing around in your computer case making upgrades like this may at first sound overwhealming--but it really is a piece of cake and there are tons of guides availible on the internet that you can read first.

Good luck to you!

Answer 2

yup it WILL SLOW IT DOWN, but not considerably, because i've used a computer with completely compressed hard drive and then formatted and didn't compress anything hoping that it would make it faster, but it seemed to stay the same speed. But i think it would slow it down. Just like recording onscreen games with fraps. if u leave the option to uncompressed, it would do it faster, but if u tell it to compress in the same time, it would save A LOT of space, BUT slow the frame rate down considerably!!! So, its up to u to compress because to me it doesn't make a difference a lot, but who knows... maybe different computers are different with compression and decompression speeds on a hard drive.

Answer 3

You're right it will give you more space...

But!!

You will loose some speed....

It takes time to UNCOMPRESS the data that you're using....

IF you compress files that you access over and over....you will really slow down your computer....

You are better off only compressing the stuff you don't use that often.,...

BTW this question was asked 2months ago...on the UK yahoo answers..... I agree with the answer there ....I recommend it :)

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061212140645AAlixTD

hope I helped you!

-dawgy

Answer 4

You get more space, but you trade off that by slowing down your machine slightly as now every time it accesses the disk it has to decompress what it is retrieving