Boost your disk space

Fancy boosting your hard disk space for nothing? Well, this Masterclass will show you how to do just that, using Windows’ own built-in compression facility.

Disk compression, as anyone who remembers the days before Windows will tell you, used to be a complicated business with a worrying built-in potential for disaster.

But today, compression is part of the Windows operating system (both XP and Vista) and is both easy to use and very safe.

Of course, now that hard disk storage is so cheap, the incentive to use compression has diminished. But cheap is not the same as free, so if you’re low on disk space and money, then compression is an option to consider.

It may also be attractive to notebook owners, who may otherwise struggle to upgrade their hard disks. Either way, in this Masterclass we’ll explain how to use Windows’ disk compression tools.

Why use compression?
These days, compression is used for three main reasons. Perhaps the most common is to shrink files prior to emailing them, which cuts down on the time they take to send and also makes them less likely to be rejected by either email server as simply being ‘too large’.

Alternatively, you might choose to compress files when backing them up onto CD, DVD or removable storage devices. This means more files can fit into the available space. Finally, and most rarely on modern PCs, compression is used to increase the amount of data that can be stored on a hard disk.