Does it make sense to compress my games partition?

[Hans Power]

Hello!
Just ran into a full HDD again and now I'm thinking about taking advantage of the NTSF drive compression feature (and before you even ask: NO, I can't afford more disk space at the moment).
So, my games partition has 841 GB in total with 12,4GB free space right now. I just tested it with Divinity 2 and it runs fine - loading times are only a wee bit longer.
I heard that the compression is a bit more CPU intensive but that it's negligible on modern CPUs. I have a Phenom II X4 965 @ 3.7Ghz, btw.
So, would you recommend compressing the whole partition or would that cause problem with a lot of games?

[AlwaysFSX]

It would make more sense to buy another hard drive or delete things you don't use.

[Hans Power]

It would make more sense to buy another hard drive or delete things you don't use.

As I mentioned - I can't afford a new HDD, so that's why I have to become inventive.

[AlwaysFSX]

As I mentioned - I can't afford a new HDD, so that's why I have to become inventive.

Again, do you play every single one of those games all the time?

[micedits]

As I mentioned - I can't afford a new HDD, so that's why I have to become inventive.

I have to say I have never compressed a games drive, and it wouldn't be something I would like to do either. Perhaps becoming inventive could be, hunting around with mates and family or stripping down old kit to find one. 

[Flojer0]

Game content is already going to be compressed, and due to the way compression works you are most likely going to end up with bigger files that take longer to read since the dictionary generated would take up space and you would need to decompress the files to get to their original state.

 

If you are working with uncompressed data then you could benefit though. I doubt games are a good candidate. Though you could try with just one or two games and see if it works, shouldn't hurt.

[Hans Power]

Game content is already going to be compressed, and due to the way compression works you are most likely going to end up with bigger files that take longer to read since the dictionary generated would take up space and you would need to decompress the files to get to their original state.

 

If you are working with uncompressed data then you could benefit though. I doubt games are a good candidate. Though you could try with just one or two games and see if it works, shouldn't hurt.

 

Right...so deleting games it is. I just thought this might be a valid alternative to squeeze out a bit more out of my stuff like I usually do.

[TheTechGenius]

Yeah, Compressing games won't do much, if anything. Most game developers already compress their game media, such as the game audio files, textures, etc..

 

For instance, you cannot compress an already created .MP4 Video file or an .MP3 Audio File, since the file is already in a compressed format. So trying to compress an .MP4 or .MP3, will not change the size of the file, because there is nothing to compress.

 

Even if you could compress an already compressed file, it wouldn't do much in terms of file size. You might be able to compress a 5GB File, and shrink it down to about 4.8GB. That is saving only 200MB, thats it. So its really not worth it.

[hojnikb]

You can look around for ripped versions of the games, you don't often play.You can save lots of space that way.

 

//no, i'm not supporting piracy