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| Certain file systems provide ways to compress files "on the fly". To the user, the files copy, cut, paste, open, and close just like always. But behind the scenes the computer is compressing and decompressing the files as they are used. |
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| Drivespace uses a "container file" concept. On your hard disk a huge single file is created, and the system maps that file to a drive letter. |
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| With Windows NT and 2000, files on a drive formatted with the NTFS file system can be compressed. It does not use "container files", instead it compresses files individually. |
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| There is usually a performance loss when using disk compression, because the processor has to be more involved in reading and writing. Some of that is offset in that the drive doesn't have as much to read since the files are smaller. |
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| Also, some files cannot be compressed, or will only see minimal compression because they don't contain many redundancies - such as compressed graphic or video formats. |
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