Thread: How much space do you gain by compressing a drive?

IMO, it's not worth the effort. You would be better off buying two or three additional hard drives -- and using two of them to create an off-site back-up set.

I'd be surprised if you gained more than 10% - just putting off the inevitable IMHO.

Conventional drives are so cheap these days, and even medium capacity SSDs are more than reasonable. For example, my main office PC only has a 256Gb SSD in it (rarely more than 50% full, including the Windows OS and all programs), and I continually export documents, photos, videos, etc. to a NAS containing 4 x 2Gb drives (actually 2 x 2Gb capacity, as they run RAID 1 for data security). This means all files, photos, videos, etc. are available across all the PCs and laptops used in the house across the network.

You can make NAS (Network Attached Storage) as complex or simple as you like, but there are some low cost 2-drive NAS boxes available. The fact that these are sold in Hardly Normal suggests that they are pretty much mainstream these days!! In your case, maybe get a cheap 2-drive NAS, plonk all your documents, photos, videos onto that, and free up enough space on your existing drive to continue using it indefinitely.

What they said about space saving - not worth it for the hassle of slower opening files.

Get yourself a SS external - blinding fast if you have USB 3 ports, silent, safe. I have a Samsung 256GB, but the 500gb are about the same money now:
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB 2.5" SATA III 7mm Internal Solid State Drive SSD 540MB/s | eBay

AFAIK, they never need defragging either.

Thanks for the feedback guys, I think I'll invest in one of these. With this and my existing 2 x 2TB external hard drives I think I'll be right for a while.

As per phone call.... do not compress, avoid cheap NAS, just get an external WD with USB3.

Other option is to convert photos and maybe videos to lower quality. You can save a serious amount of data doing this. Most cameras these days have more resolution than actually required.

Obviously this depends on the nature of the photos and what you are intending to do with them.

I have used both WD and Synology NAS's and Synology win by a long shot due to the desktop OS built into them. The download station in the Synology is also another huge advantage as the download can be set up and the computer turned off leaving the NAS to complete the download. There are aslo a lot of apps that can be added to the NAS for additional ease of use.

Just back from Centrecom with a new WD Elements 4 TB external HDD and a USB 3 PCI card. All installed and running. In the process of copying 122,660 items (1.75 TB), time remaining: about 6 HR 30 Mins.

Both drives are USB 3 capable of 5Gb/s transfer rate, why so slow?

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I've done a bit of tinkering, and the transfer rate is now ~100 Mb/s. Still very slow IMHO.

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It's windows and that explains everything. A lot depends on how deep the directories are and a lot depends on the angle you hold your head.

and if the data is just travelling along the bus, or through the processor.

Windows gets in the road of file copy speeds. Antivirus may impact speed too to some extent. I always kick those sorts of file copies off before I go to bed, by the time I get back to it is all done.

Hi John,
software for compressing files works by removing empty space between files and deleting information that it feels is not important to the files integrity. It would appear that your drive is mainly filled with Raw files which cannot be compressed and video files. If you cannot live without these files I would suggest that compressing them will not save much space. the cost of external storage has plummeted recently so I would look at how long it took you to fill 1.75 TB and consider buying a new external drive
regards
MarkCoffs