Web Talk

Inside our computers we tend to store and stuff a lot of files: from pictures to music, from documents to games. We keep everything and it is very rare that we throw something even if it is totally useless. The latest generation of hard disks doesn’t help us a lot since they are bigger and bigger and can store hundreds of gigabytes. So, what solution do we have? One of them is to buy a nice external hard disk, but what if we don’t want to spend anything? Windows Vista and XP have, among their features a little utility which can spare you from throwing some of your precious junk and, at the same time, save some of your bucks! Let’s see how to free some space on the hard disk with this trick:

1. Click Start.
2. Right click on one Hard Disk.
3. Click on Properties.
4. Tick on Compress contents to save disk space.
5. A window will pop-up asking you: Apply changes to this folder only – Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files. Choose: Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files.
6. At this point your computer will start compressing the drive you chose. This will take some minutes, but at the end of the process you can stay assured by the fact that you will have freed a lot of megabytes or even some gigabytes on your computer.
7. This trick also works if you right click a folder or a file, select Properties, click Advanced on the window and tick Compress contents to save disk space.

Notes

• Files/folders/drives encrypted are not allowed to be compressed by the system.
• Compression only works on NTFS drives.
• Compressing and decompressing on the fly may cause your computer to slow down a little bit. Most of you won’t even notice it, but anyway you could experience that. Of course the compression is revertible.