Drive Compression Inquiry

Hi everybody!

I have a 250 gig external hard drive. I use it for backing up important documents, which I know takes up very little storage. However, I also store large files, such as audio and video and games, and I am starting to run low on storage. I really would like to avoid buying another drive right away. My question is, if I use drive compression, how many more gigs will I be able to download? Also, are there any bad side effects? Would this have any effect on my internal drive, or slow down my computer? I would very much appreciate advice weighing the benefits against the negatives of compressing an external drive, and how much extra space I would have.

Thank you any and all.

(Dell Dimension 4550 ... windows XP ... pentium 4 / 2.53 ghz ... processor speed 2.46 ghz ... 256 RAM ... operating system version 5.1.2600 ... and the external hard drive is an IO Magic 250 gigabyte)

If you have a lot of JPEG, MPEG or MP3 Files, They are already compressed, so you won't see a great deal of change there.

If you have a lot of text files, documents, or programes, then it could make a substancial difference. Just remember, when compressing/decompressing it takes up a lot of your CPU, so files that you use often will be slower to open due to decompression.

Also to compress, the HDD needs to formatted in NTFS.

You can always try the compression, and if it's not working out for you then change it back. Really simple to do.

Click Start > My Computer > Right Click the HDD > Properties > Check compress.... OK

If not what you expected, Go back and uncheck compress...
Hope this Helps.

__________________
I Don't Suffer From Insanity, I Enjoy Every Minute of it