Slide 1

Compresing files searching and working with discThe hard drives made these days have greater capacities than ever, but programs and files are much bigger, too. Running out of disk space is still a common problem. Fortunately, Windows 8.1 is especially effective at compressing files and folders to take up less disk space.

Compressing files and folders can also be useful when you want to email files to someone without dooming them to an all-night modem-watching session. Thats why Microsoft has endowed Windows with two different schemes for compressing files and folders: NTFS compression for storing files on your hard drive, and zipped folders for files that might have to be transferred.NtFS CompressionIf you have Windows 8.1, then your hard drive is formatted using a file system called NTFS (short for NT file system). The NTFS compression scheme is especially likable because its completely invisible to you. Windows automatically compresses and decompresses your files, almost instantaneously. At some point, you may even forget youve turned it on. Consider:Whenever you open a compressed file, Windows quickly and invisibly expands it to its original form so you can read or edit it. When you close the file again, Windows instantly recompresses it.If you send compressed files via emailor copy them to a PC whose hard drive doesnt use NTFS compression, Windows once again decompresses them, quickly and invisibly.Any file you copy into a compressed folder or diskis 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.)