[WinMac] RE: Compression software for NT wanted

Leonard Rosenthol(leonardr[at]lazerware.com)
Tue, 23 Feb 1999 14:30:18 -0500

At 9:43 AM -0800 2/23/99, Harris, Matt wrote:
> I am fairly certain you can do that with features built into NT for an
> entire drive. I don't think you can specify a single directory or not.

        You CAN specify it on a directory by directory basis - given
an NTFS drive (as Dan reminded me).

> The problem is that once you have filled your disk with compressed files,
> you will no longer know how much disk space you actually need to decompress
> you files.

        The answer to that question is NONE! All decompression is
done in memory, it's never written back out the disk in decompressed
format.

> Compression slows down your system significantly when it is
> implemented in the way you describe.

        Not on any modern (Pentium class) system. The processor can
run compression algorithms in memory MUCH faster than disk I/O.

> When you want to improve the stability
> of your system in the future, one of the things you will need to do is
> decompress.

        Why? That may have been true in the past on the MacOS when
transparent compression was implemented via patches to the OS. But
in the case of NT, disk level compression is an OS feature, it's
implemented there directly and won't "conflict".

Leonard

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