Compressing NTFS drive

[BluesMan1]

I have 4 partitions on 2 hard drive both Maxtor 120 Gig.

On the first drive i have 3 partitions:

C: FAT 32 for XP, 9.75 Gig but 4.34 free space

D: FAT 32 for setup files including i386, 8.41 Gig with 4.33 available

E: NTFS for other stuff (MP3, backup software and others), 96.3 Gig with 39.3 available

F: NTFS still for other stuff (i have a lot of musik...), 114 Gig with 81 Gig available.

I'm ok with C and D but for E and F what would be the benifit of compressing them. I have a lot of space now that i have 240 Gig to play with so is it really useful for me to do it ?



Thanks for your time.

[Steve R Jones]

Not sure why you'd even consider this since you have so much space? But, access to the files would be slowed down...

[BluesMan1]

Steve,

Are you saying that if i compress my NTFS drives i will see a slow down in accessing files ?

[Bill in SD, CA]

Originally posted by Steve R Jones
But, access to the files would be slowed down...

Bill

[elroy]

IMO, compression always increased risk of data loss or corruption in FAT and FAT32 but I don't know if this would apply to NTFS.

[PresterJohn]

Originally posted by elroy
IMO, compression always increased risk of data loss or corruption in FAT and FAT32 but I don't know if this would apply to NTFS.

in nt/w2k/xp you CANNOT compress folders on fat drives, they must be ntfs volumes.

BluesMan1, the amount of savings you would see for mp3 files would be nearly insignificant. files that are already 'internally' compressed will see little benefit to storing them in compressed folders. files like databases, ms office documents, etc will see very good results.

as for the speed factor, if you are using a fairly powerful processor (over p3-1ghz), the speed delay isnt very noticeable. maybe a second or two if the file is very large...on small files, it is undetectable.

[BluesMan1]

Thanks for the replies,

Actually i'm working with Barton 2800+ @ 2.08 with Kingston 512 DDR ( 2 X 256) in Dual Channel Mode. My system is fast and reliable with Asus A7N8X Deluxe board.

I'm asking questions to have a more personnal view of the subject. I have read articles about it but sometimes it's better to have information from real people.

I have also another question about NTFS. My C and D drives are in FAT 32, would it be recommended to convert both of them in NTFS ?

Thanks again for your time.

[Bill in SD, CA]

Originally posted by BluesMan1
I have also another question about NTFS. My C and D drives are in FAT 32, would it be recommended to convert both of them in NTFS ?

I would be the last to argue against it.

Better security available and better use of HDD space.

Bill

[PresterJohn]

>I have also another question about NTFS. My C and D drives are in FAT 32, would it be recommended to convert both of them in NTFS ?

i would recommend converting to ntfs. the only real reason to use fat volumes is if you are running dual boot systems w/win9x and want to access files across drives or if you are running a very small partition size (<2gb) and are filling to forego ntfs features like permissions, encryption and compression.

while it's true you lose the ability to use a dos/win9x boot disk for emergency repair, there are other offsetting ways of doing it.

[BluesMan1]

Looks like NTFS is well recommended but i format my C drive at least once every 2 months so i can't do that with the regular fdisk command if the drive is in NTFS. I never tried to format using anything else because i always had FAT 32 for the C where XP is installed. Looks like i'll have to try doing it sometimes with some other tool.

Again thanks for your time.