Boost your disk space

The first two goals are achieved through the compressed folders feature built into Windows (or by using a third-party utility, such as Winzip or 7-Zip), while the business of fitting more onto a hard disk is a job for something called NTFS (New Technology Filing System) disk compression ­ and that is the subject of this Masterclass.

How much disk space can be saved?
The amount of extra space that can be created depends on what sort of files are stored on the hard disk. If the files are predominantly programs, MP3 files, PDFs and JPEGs from digital cameras, then there are hardly any gains to be made, because these file types are already heavily compressed.

On the other hand, if a disk contains lots of scanned images in TIFF format or document files from digital cameras and data files from word processors and spreadsheets, these can be compressed to a tiny fraction of their original size.

As a rule of thumb, on a 60GB hard disk with a mix of programs, multimedia files and business data, expect to gain somewhere between 2GB and 8GB of extra storage. This may not be a huge amount, but it could give a laptop with a non-upgradeable drive a new lease of life ­ and remember, it’s free.

It’s also worth pointing out that NTFS disk compression isn’t a substitute for zipping files before emailing or backup. This is because as soon as an NTFS-compressed file leaves its NTFS hard disk, it will revert to its true, full size. Therefore, NTFS compression should be seen as a seamless and safe way of increasing the capacity of a hard disk, not as a complete replacement for conventional Zip files.

What you need
To perform NTFS compression, no additional software is required and no changes need be made to the way you use your computer. The only prerequisite is that the disk on which compressed files are to be stored must have been formatted as an NTFS disk.

NTFS was introduced with Windows 2000 and is also used by XP and Vista. It’s a more efficient way of organising files on a hard disk than the Fat 32 system used on earlier versions of Windows.