[Denisejm]

This isn't an important topic but one that's had me wondering for years. When Disk Clean-Up is started, it finds files that it considers to be old/no longer any good and puts them in a category to Compress Old Files. Why doesn't Disk Clean-up just put them in a deletion section instead of compressing them? From what I know, they're no good after they've been compressed and, in their compressed state, they're still taking up room.

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Why doesn't Disk Clean-up just put them in a deletion section instead of compressing them? From what I know, they're no good after they've been compressed and, in their compressed state, they're still taking up room.

the files are fine after being compressed, they are only compresses if the files are older than 50 days. So if you need the extra disk space, compressing old files is a good idea.

The compressed files are still accessible because Windows decompresses them on the fly when you open them, but they may take a little longer to open. You can tell a file is compressed because its file name is blue in Windows Explorer.

Is compressing files safe? Well the technology has been around for about a decade now, and it's well supported by utilities, so yes, it's probably safe.

Whenever you want to return a compressed file to its uncompressed state, right-click it and select Properties. Click the Advanced button, uncheck Compress contents to save disk space, and click OK.

hope this helps

[BHowett]

Why doesn't Disk Clean-up just put them in a deletion section instead of compressing them? From what I know, they're no good after they've been compressed and, in their compressed state, they're still taking up room.

the files are fine after being compressed, they are only compresses if the files are older than 50 days. So if you need the extra disk space, compressing old files is a good idea.

The compressed files are still accessible because Windows decompresses them on the fly when you open them, but they may take a little longer to open. You can tell a file is compressed because its file name is blue in Windows Explorer.

Is compressing files safe? Well the technology has been around for about a decade now, and it's well supported by utilities, so yes, it's probably safe.

Whenever you want to return a compressed file to its uncompressed state, right-click it and select Properties. Click the Advanced button, uncheck Compress contents to save disk space, and click OK.

hope this helps

[Denisejm]

Yea, it did help. I noticed how the highlighting/coloring of files change when using my pointer. Some were blue and others were beige.

Does a computer only compress a certain type of file. I have mp3's in my computer that I haven't listened to in a year or so and the file names/file structure look the same as when I first installed them. Does the file name remain but the contents are compressed?

My hard drive has 2 partitions. One is my C drive for my programs and the other is my D drive that I keep everything else. I used Disk Cleaner every week or so on my C drive but I've never run it on my D drive. I decided to check it out and ran Disk Cleaner on my D drive. It took a very long time. The first time, I let it run for 1/2 hr because I didn't think it was working. There were no little green squares in the time line. I started it up again and the recycle bin was cleaned out but there were still 5G of files that needed to be compressed. I just noticed that it stopped and I started it up again and it shows that 27M still needs to be cleaned.

I'm a hardware person . . . it's basically plug and play, but software has so many nuances and unexplainable problems that I usually wind up formatting my pc at least every 6 months. My drivers are up to date as are my programs and x64 os.