Section 3.11. Compressing Files and Folders: All Versions

3.11. Compressing Files and Folders: All Versions

Windows is especially effective at compressing files and folders to reduce the space they occupy on your hard drivewhich is ironic, considering the fact that hard drives these days have enough capacity to stretch to Bill Gates's house and back three times.

Even so, compressing files and folders can occasionally be useful, especially when hard drive space is running short, or when you want to email files to someone without dooming them to an all-night modem-watching session. Maybe that's why Microsoft has endowed Windows Vista with two different schemes for compressing files and folders: NTFS compression and zipped folders .

3.11.1. NTFS Compression

Windows Vista, since you asked, requires a hard drive that's formatted using a software scheme called NTFS (short for NT file system; see page 621 for details). It's a much more modern formatting scheme than its predecessor, something called FAT32and among its virtues is, you guessed it, NTFS compression.

This compression scheme is especially likable because it's completely invisible. Windows automatically compresses and decompresses your files, almost instantaneously. At some point, you may even forget you've turned it on. Consider:

Whenever you open a compressed file, Windows quickly and invisibly expands it to its original form so that you can edit it. When you close the file again, Windows instantly recompresses it.
If you send compressed files (via disk or email, for example) to a PC whose hard drive doesn't use NTFS formatting, Windows once again decompresses them, quickly and invisibly.
Any file you copy into a compressed folder or disk is compressed automatically. (If you only move it into such a folder from elsewhere on the disk, however, it stays compressed or uncompressedwhichever it was originally.)

There's only one downside to all this: you don't save a lot of disk space using NTFS compression (at least not when compared with Zip compression, described in the next section). Even so, if your hard drive is anywhere near full, it might be worth turning on NTFS compression. The space you save could be your own.

3.11.1.1. Compressing files, folders, or disks

To turn on NTFS compression, right-click the icon for the file, folder, or disk whose contents you want to shrink; from the shortcut menu, choose Properties. Proceed as shown in Figure 3-18.

Figure 3-18. In the Properties dialog box for any file or folder, click Advanced. Turn on the checkbox that says "Compress drive to save disk space." All the subfolders will be compressed, too .

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
Your Turn to Drive

Hey, my Dell has two CD/DVD burners. How do I specify which one is the default for burning blank discs?

All in good time, grasshoppa.

Choose Start Computer. Right-click the icon of the burner you want; from the shortcut menu, choose Properties. Click the recording tab; use the drive menu to choose the one you want to do the heavy lifting . (Authenticate yourself if necessary, as described on page 191.)

Many Windows veterans wind up turning on compression for the entire hard drive, even though it takes Windows several hours to do the job. (If you plan to go see a movie while Windows is working, though, quit all your programs first. Otherwise, the compression process will halt whenever it encounters an open filewaiting for you to close the file or tell Windows to ignore itand you'll find the job only half done when you return from the cineplex.)

When Windows is finished compressing, their names appear in a different color , a reminder that Windows is doing its part to maximize your disk space.

Note: If they don't change color, somebodymaybe youmust have turned off the "Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color" option (see page 85).

3.11.2. Zipped Folders

As noted above, NTFS compression is ideal for freeing up disk space while you're working at your PC. But as soon as you email your files to somebody else or burn them to a CD, the transferred copies bloat right back up to their original sizes.

Fortunately, there's another way to compress files: Zip them. If you've ever used Windows before, you've probably encountered Zip files. Each one is a tiny little suitcase, an archive , whose contents have been tightly compressed to keep files together, to save space, and to transfer them online faster (see Figure 3-19). Use this method when you want to email something to someone, or when you want to pack up a completed project and remove it from your hard drive to free up space.

Figure 3-19. Top: A Zip archive looks just like an ordinary folderexcept for the tiny little zipper .
Bottom: Double-click one to open its window and see what's inside. Notice (in the Ratio column) that JPEG graphics and GIF graphics usually don't become much smaller than they were before zipping, since they're already compressed formats. But word processing files, program files, and other file types reveal quite a bit of shrinkage .

3.11.2.1. Creating zipped folders

You can create a Zip archive in either of two ways:

Right-click any blank spot on the desktop or an open window. From the shortcut menu, choose New Compressed (zipped) Folder. Type a name for your newly created, empty archive, and then press Enter.

Now, each time you drag a file or folder onto the archive's icon (or into its open window), Windows automatically stuffs a copy of it inside.

Of course, you haven't exactly saved any disk space, since now you have two copies (one zipped, one untouched). If you'd rather move a file or folder into the archivein the process deleting the full- size version and saving disk spaceright-drag the file or folder icon onto the archive icon. Now from the shortcut menu, choose Move Here.
To turn an existing file or folder into a Zip archive, right-click its icon. (To zip up a handful of icons, select them first, then right-click any one of them.) Now, from the shortcut menu, choose Send To Compressed (zipped) Folder. Youve just created a new archive folder and copied the files or folders into it.

Tip: At this point, you can right-click the zipped folder's icon and choose Send To

Mail Recipient. Windows automatically whips open your email program, creates an outgoing message ready for you to address, and attaches the zipped file to it. Its now set for transport.

WORKAROUND WORKSHOP
Flavors of UDF

Different operating systems understand different versions of UDF:

Windows 98 and Windows 2000 can't understand any version.

Mac OS X (10.3 and 10.4) and Windows 2000 can all recognize UDF 1.5, but not anything later. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (and later) are good with UDF 2.01. And Vista, of course, can even understand UDF 2.5, although 2.01 is the factory setting. (Nobody ever said this stuff was gonna be easy.)

In any case, if you learn that your adoring audience requires one UDF format or another, you can let Windows Vista know.

You must specify which version you want to burn in step 3 in the steps on page 153. See the dialog box that appears (Figure 3-20)? When you choose "Show formatting options," you'll see a link called "Change version."

Click it to open a dialog box that offers four different UDF versions, ranging from 1.50 to 2.50.

Click OK after you've made your choice from the pop-up menu. Now, good luck to you.

3.11.2.2. Working with zipped folders

In many respects, a zipped folder behaves just like any ordinary folder. Double-click it to see what's inside.

If you double-click one of the files you find inside, however, Windows opens up a read-only copy of itthat is, a copy you can view, but not edit. To make changes to a read-only copy, you must use the File Save As command and save it somewhere else on your hard drive.

Note: Be sure to navigate to the desktop or Documents folder, for example, before you save your edited document. Otherwise, Windows will save it into an invisible temporary folder, where you may never see it again.

To decompress only some of the icons in a zipped folder, just drag them out of the archive window; they instantly spring back to their original sizes. Or, to decompress the entire archive, right-click its icon and choose Extract All from the shortcut menu (or, if its window is already open, click the "Extract all files" link on the task toolbar). A dialog box asks you to specify where you want the resulting files to wind up.