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If I just set checkbox for compressing drive C in Windows Explorer, I will get numerous file sharing errors, because many files are opened when Windows is running.

Is it possible to compress drive in monopole mode somehow, so that it compress all files>

Dims
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4 Answers4

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I compressed through windows recovery system before boot, via command line.compact /C /S /I E:\*.*

All works fine, tested in VMWare

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Stephen Rauch
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iperov
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I'd say use a Windows 10/11 installation media, then use SHIFT+F10 to open the console, then issue compact however you wish.

Why am I posting then? Just wanted to say that I've used compact/compression on Win10 for years on business, home machines and never had any issue. You can compress the whole system just fine.

You can even issue compact /CompactOs always and have no issues whatsoever.

There is even a GUI for Compact: https://github.com/ImminentFate/CompactGUI

Apache
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DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT DO THIS!!

Source: I did the exact same thing a year back and it renders the system entirely unusable. In my case, the process completed without any error, but when you boot, Windows doesn't create a mechanism to properly decompress the data and boot fails. You can compress other folders but leave out Windows and Program files at the least.

Besides, compressing might even mean slower performance depending on your processing power, since everything has to be decompressed every time (though it could be marginally faster if your I/O speeds are the bottleneck).

pulsejet
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For SSD using NTFS compression reduces a lot the life of the SSD, because NTFS compression works as follows:

  1. It writes the file in uncompressed mode
  2. Then it parses the file looking for chunks of clusters that when compressed can leave at least one 4KiB free, if so then re-writes that chunk in compressed mode at the same start location of that chunk, freeing the last 4KiB clusters of that chunk that on compressed mode are not needed.

That is why BIG files that get high NTFS compression ratio also get so fragmented.

Using NTFS compression causes more writes to the disk (if write cache and empty cache are not active for the whole drive, Disk Management -> Drive Properties -> Directives).

Claudio
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