Windows Tips: To save disk space by compressing your files and folders

The New Technology File System (NTFS) was developed by Microsoft to be the default file system of Windows NT, a family of operating systems released by the Redmond giant in July 1993.

Since the goal of Windows NT was to win a slice of the market for systems targeted at servers, Microsoft had to replace the old file system, FAT, for one who could restrict access to certain files by users and of avoiding that data were corrupted by being turned off abruptly, as in the case of a power outage, for example.

Since then the NTFS was used for all NT-derived systems: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

A feature of NTFS that often goes unnoticed by users is the option to compress files and folders. Enabling this feature of your files are taking up less disk space, and different methods of compression such as ZIP and RAR files still be accessed as normal because the decompression of data is transparent to the user.

The disadvantage is that with this you may notice a drop in performance, especially if you compress large files or used very often. This is due to the fact that Windows will have to unzip the files when you use them and recompress when you finish.

Therefore, it is recommended that you compress files or folders are essential to the functioning of the system. Note also that the files are decompressed before being transferred over a network, so this feature will not have any effect on the bandwidth.

Free more disk space

To enable the compression of files, open Windows Explorer, right-click over the file or folder you want to compress and select "Properties." In the "General" tab, you can check the file size and what is the space occupied by it on disk:

Click the "Advanced ..." and, in the new window, select the "Compress contents to save disk space":

Click "OK" to return to previous window. If you have enabled compression for a folder, you should also confirm if you also want to compress all subfolders that may exist within it. This confirmation is done by clicking the "Apply" button:

After you apply the changes, you can check the new file size by choosing "Properties", clicking right on it.

Stand out from the others

Lest you need to check the properties of each file to find out if it is compressed or not, the system highlights the file type from the others:

If necessary, you can also make this setting manually. To do this, run Control Panel via the Start Menu and then go to Appearance and Themes> Folder Options:

In the "Advanced Settings" tab "View", enable the "Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color". Do not forget to click the buttons "Apply" and "OK" for the change to take effect.