Windows Hard Disk Compression Question

[bluestrobe]

I have a 500GB Seagate IDE hard drive on my server dedicated to my DVD backup. I backed up my collection to 2GB Xvid files each in their own folder. I have 55.9GB left (465GB total) and now I can't really defrag it due to the 20% rule. I have about 5 more movies I would like to add to the drive then I'm done for now. Would it be a waste of my time to have Windows compress the drive? I might move some movies to another freed up disk. The only draw back is sometimes I watch the movies right off the server of my network so the compression might screw that up a little bit. Suggestions?

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: bluestrobe
I have a 500GB Seagate IDE hard drive on my server dedicated to my DVD backup. I backed up my collection to 2GB Xvid files each in their own folder. I have 55.9GB left (465GB total) and now I can't really defrag it due to the 20% rule. I have about 5 more movies I would like to add to the drive then I'm done for now. Would it be a waste of my time to have Windows compress the drive? I might move some movies to another freed up disk. The only draw back is sometimes I watch the movies right off the server of my network so the compression might screw that up a little bit. Suggestions?

Xvid files are already compressed, the NTFS compression isn't going to compress them further so it's really of no use in this situation.

 

[Modelworks]

Might want to get a copy of perfectdisk.
http://www.raxco.com/products/perfectdisk2k/
Has a free trial.
I use it and have never had a problem with the freespace so I just checked the help file .

While a certain amount of usable free space is required for any disk defragmenter to work, PerfectDisk performs well with as little as 5% usable free space.

 

[bluestrobe]

Originally posted by: bsobelXvid files are already compressed, the NTFS compression isn't going to compress them further so it's really of no use in this situation.

That's what I was thinking.