Next message: John Nurick: "RE: [WinMac] And how do I upgrade to Win98?"
Actually, disk compression in general is a double-edged sword; plus NT's
disk compression makes it a triple-edged sword(!)
Basically, disk compression allows you to trade off CPU cycles for speed;
or in other words, if you have a slow disk and fast CPU, then compression
can indeed speed up a given machine.
On the other hand, if you have very fast disk(s) but a slow CPU (&/or not
enough RAM) then disk compression will slow you down.
[Here's a Mac Photoshop tip: Take a look at the "Disable Scratch
Compression" plug-in if you have a really fast SCSI disk!]
Getting back to NT, or more accurately NTFS: Disk compression throws a new
wrinkle into the mix. You need to keep in mind that smaller files are
stored directly in the MFT (Master File Table) reserved zone; or more
specifically files with sizes up to 16 clusters. [This is also why I
recommend 4 kilobyte clusters, and why 512 byte clusters are SO bad.] When
you turn ON compression, the MFT reserved zone can become badly fragmented,
drastically reducing performance... Yuk!
I routinely decompress entire volumes to grab better performance. From a
command prompt for (arbitrary) drive L, enter:
C:\compact L:\*.* /u /s /a /i /f
[You can type in COMPACT /? to see what the switches do.]
Hope this helps!
Dan
At 06:09 PM 3/27/00 -0500, Curtis Wilcox wrote:
>At 04:47 PM 3/27/2000 -0500, Tom Roth wrote:
>
>>I've got an NT workstation at home with a mere 1GB IDE hard drive.
>>Available disk space is not too bad but only because I've set NT to
>>compress the data on this disk, otherwise I'd probably be out of space
>>by now. I'm guessing that setting the disk to be compressed by NT
>>causes the system to access the disk slower?
>
>Here's the story on NT disk compression. Access time is actually faster
>because there's less to read off the disk. Additional time is then required
>by the processor to decompress the data. So whether or not you actually
>experience any speed difference depends on your hardware and what you're
>doing with it at any given moment. If the machine is old enough to have a
>1GB drive, the net effect is probably a slower system.
[Balance trimmed]
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: Mon Mar 27 2000 - 21:23:50 PST