sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories compressing c drive what are the disadvantges ?

what if any are the disadvantages of "compressing the C drive to save disc space " Os is , vista home premium I'm trying to help a friend out she has a 66gb HD and 9mb free .

we cant figure out whats filling the drive , I was going to use go to my pc to remote in and see what I can find but there isn't even enough space to load that

I borrowed a vista laptop from my daughter in law so I could look at the OS ., when I go to the c drive I see the option to "compress this drive to save disk space "

what if anything is the disadvantage to doing this ?

she is a photographer so I suspect a lot of it is picture files would compressing affect them ?

Skip did you install and run Ccleaner and then use Treesize? I dont like compressing drives because of the possibility of data loss when trying to recover files. With the cost of hard drives so low I cant recommend ever doing it. Thats one of those tools that we really dont need. Pictures are already compressed so your not going to see a big space increase if you suspect thats what is taking up all of the space. If you havent used Ccleaner and Treesize then thats what you should do first.

Hi Tito

no I cant get in , there isn't enough space to load the software for go to my PC . so this morning I'm going to see if I can talk hr through clearing enough HD space to load it .

I did run both of those on mine yesterday , and they looked good so when I get in and have enough space ill run them.

I thought compressing wasn't a good option but Im trying to find a quick way to get enough space to get in

thanks

I disagree with that part. Take a look at the size of those photos. Bet you find that they are 2 MB minimum. They add up very fast, espectially if she's a photographer.

If that's the case I usually resize them using Irfanview. However in her case I'd use a separate HD just for the photos.

If she's a photographer, she will HATE having her photos resized. Going from an uncompressed (or even a compressed but large file) format to a compressed, resized .jpg destroys a LOT of information, that you just can't get back. She should be storing her hi-resolution images on external media, as you say. And, need I say it, backups, backups, backups!

when she first told me she was having issues I asked about the photos and she told me they where all stored on a external drive she bought for the purpose

guess what ? the external HD was on a bad USB port with only one gb used out off 299 the pictures where all in "my pics " on C

I cleared up 13 gb 3 + hours and we had both had enough SO I'll do another session next week

turns out compression was already turned on for the drive so I'm guessing someone else addressed the problem at some point Ill turn compression off at some future point

its so much easier to do this with control of the screen

You dont normally want to compress pics especially if shes a photographer. As Tod said youll lose data that you just cant get back. Compressing a picture using a compression utility is not the same as using an utility to reduce a pictures file size. If there ever comes a time when you need to enlarge or print out those pictures youll be glad you kept them untouched. Of course this assumes your starting out with a high quality photo in the first place.

There is a difference between LOSSLESS compression and LOSSY compression. With lossless compression no data is lost. The Windows file compression is lossless. With lossy compression, a lot of the information is permanently discarded. A jpeg file is a lossy format. Information present in the original photo has been tossd out. For instance, the number of colors may be reduced, and pixels that are similar in color may be rendered as the same color. This does reduce the file size by quite a lot, but it also reduces the quality and detail of the photo.

I can go down to my local computer store and buy a 1 TeraByte drive for $60, so upgrading the amount of disk storage is definitely the way to deal with this problem.

I see a bigger problem, though. I get calls every day from people who have external UsB drives that have failed. It is less common for an internal hard drive to fail, but by no means uncommon either. If your friend values her photos at all, she must immediately start backing them up. The easiest and cheapest way to do this is to buy TWO hard drive and to use a program that wil automatically back up one to the other. I like SyncBack free, but there are many, many backup programs. OR subscribe to an online off-site backup program. These have really come down in price in the past year.

I'm a big believer in redundancy on crucial data , I wanted to burn the pics to cds along with the external drive before deleting them from C but she said no

she is easily frustrated with this sort of thing and just had enough

I like the dual HDS but money is a issue right now so I'm trying to work with what she has

If cost is an issue, there are free online file hosts, just like there are free online web hosts. Just google it. Also there are tons of free photo sharing sites made specifically for storing photos online. Also you can store files in gmail. I am not sure of the details of this, but my son tells me he saves all his files on gmail somehow. Anybody know how?