Compressing files/drives

42thgamer · December 29, 2018

Hello everyone

I recelntly got my hands on an prety old but still useable HDD drive with 300gb of space. I want to use it as a backup drive for some files. I was wondering if it is worth it to compress everything using the option that windows provides. I looked around on the internet but couldn't really find a good awnser. Will in be a big difrence in space and speed or not? Is it an option for drives you use more often?

Thanks for the help!

Greetz a young guy getting into tech

hojnikb · December 30, 2018

No, it's not worth it. NTFS compression is really poor at compressing things (even worse than ZIP). Also, media being nowadays compressed anyway (jpgs, mp4/mkvs, most game files) it will make no difference whatsoever, just kills performance.

Also, if it's an old drive, chuck it trash and forget about it. It's likely on its last legs and will just cause issues.

42thgamer · January 10, 2019

On 12/30/2018 at 6:08 AM, hojnikb said:

No, it's not worth it. NTFS compression is really poor at compressing things (even worse than ZIP). Also, media being nowadays compressed anyway (jpgs, mp4/mkvs, most game files) it will make no difference whatsoever, just kills performance.

Also, if it's an old drive, chuck it trash and forget about it. It's likely on its last legs and will just cause issues.

Okay thanks!