If you have installed large apps and games on your Windows 10 PC and are running low on space, you can shrink their size using CompactGUI. And the beauty about it is that the app will reduce the file sizes without impacting performance. But what is CompactGUI, and how do you use it?
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle []).push(); Above you can see its interface where it is showing original size and compressed size chart. I was able to gain some disk space (around 134 MB) after compression. This could be more as it might depend on the compression algorithm as well as the type of installed programs.
CompactGUI will compress installed Programs and save Disk Space on Windows 10
CompactGUI is the graphical version of the Compact OS tool built into Windows 10. The tool allows you to compress games and apps folders so that you can free up GBs of disk space. With the CompactGUI tool, you will be able to reduce the size of games and programs by up to 60%.
According to the developer of the tool, the new compression algorithm introduced in Windows 10 for the Compact OS feature is similar NTFS-LZNT1 compression (right-click > properties > compress to save space) that we all have used but much more efficient, multi-threaded, and designed for use on executable programs with a negligible performance loss.
We recommend XPRESS8K or XPRESS16K to compress games and programs. The XPRESS4K is the fastest compression method but might not free up a substantial amount of free space. The LZX method compression is the slowest but reduces the size of games and programs dramatically. The catch is that highly compressed files might add more load on your CPU and might affect the overall performance.
Did you know the NTFS file system used by Windows 10 can transparently compress your files to save disk space? Windows included compression in the NTFS file system for years but the complex options that provide the real value were hidden in a command line utility known as compact.exe. If you are a command line ninja I suggest taking a look at compact.exe /? to learn about the options. For everyone else, there is a very useful graphical interface called Compact GUI.
File system compression is something that can be found in all modern file systems. But there generally is a trade-off in performance which can slightly slow down loading of applications and increase CPU utilization. However, with certain compression options, the performance impact can be next to nothing. And in many cases, it is worth it from a disk space perspective.
The application that I picked to compress for this demonstration was a small GoPro utility but the result was a 21% savings of disk space. For comparison, I compressed Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands which consumes 50 GB of space on my drive. It took about 7 minutes to compress the files with the XPress8K compression I selected. The result was a savings of 31 GB!
My M.2 was full a week ago (It has my windows and a game) and I noticed programs and other stuff loading slowly. Made some space and it made all the difference.Now I compressed some games and I have about 100 GB free amid those 3
But isn't the saved space kinda useless either way? Sure you compressed the files but Steam reserves a set amount for the game regardless of how big the game is. So the saved space would only contribute to a possibility of faster loading times while not really giving you more space to work with :/
Compression works wonders and if you have a good compression format you can save a lot of space with zero loss in visual or audio fidelity. This tool should work wonders but you know what would work even better? If the developers compressed their sound in the first place and then gave language specific versions. One of the Halo games has 30,000 audio files for in-game NPC behavior allowing them to express themselves based on the circumstances. Now imagine all of those being uncompressed and then having 30 different versions for all the supported languages. It's a joke. Blu-ray is one of the worst things to ever happen to the gaming industry. There's more I could mention but character limit.
The only caveat is that the NTFS file compression requires additional resources to process decompression and recompression every time you access content on the drive, which could impact performance on low-end devices. However, you can still find many scenarios to use this feature. For example, it could be another option to reduce space usage if running low on disk space. You could use the feature to archive files you don't use often. Or you can enable the lightweight file compression from NTFS on a folder or drive you to store files that won't significantly degrade performance, such as documents and pictures.
You can enable NTFS compression on an empty drive or storage with content. However, if the disk already has contents, the NTFS compression will need to spend extra time compressing the existing files.
If you have relatively old hardware, you shouldn't use compression. Instead, you should upgrade the storage with an external hard drive. When you switch to a larger drive, it means more space to save files without extra resources to compress and decompress the data.
When using this space-saving feature, compressed files (such as .mp3, .zip, and .mp4 files) won't shrink storage usage further. Also, decompression is required to send the files over the network, which means the feature won't save you bandwidth, and it'll need more time to complete the process. If you want to send files using compression, you should be using another compression container (such as Zip) or the SMB compression feature for file transmissions.
In general, it is used to store/cache the basic installer for programs, so that when you want to modify an installed program, it runs from there and allows you to uninstall or possibly even do a repair without needing the original installation media, and so there should be no adverse affects from setting it to use NTFS compression.
When working with Hyper-V dynamically expanding disks, there is always a risk that those disks will grow uncontrollably and reach their maximum size in no time. The only way to deal with this issue is to regularly monitor disk size changes and then manually reconfigure the virtual hard disk properties. To ensure effective storage space allocation, you can either shrink or compact virtual hard disks.
So, why do you need to shrink or compact virtual hard disks? The answer is simple. The size of the virtual hard disk can be reduced only manually. If you decide to simply delete content, you will clear up space on the virtual hard disk, and not on the physical disk. To free up physical disk space, you need to either shrink or compact virtual hard disks, depending on your needs.
With Compactor, we can select the folders and files to compress. This means we can use Compactor in large folders in the system drive which are not required to run Windows.Another benefit of using this utility is that it provides the option to choose from the different kinds of compression systems; from faster compression and lower size decrement to slower compression and larger size decrement of files. Depending upon the use of your PC, you can choose which kind of compression you would prefer.You also do not need to worry about the execution time when the files and folders are compressed. They will still be visible to you just the same as before through File Explorer. Moreover, when a file/folder is in use, it will automatically decompress quickly for you to use normally and then recompress when closed. This ensures lag-free regular usage of applications and programs.
Is your Windows 10 PC drive running out of free space? Do you want to compress games and programs to use less disk space without affecting performance? In this guide we will see how to compress games and programs to free up disk space.
CompactGUI is the graphical version of the Compact OS tool built into Windows 10. The tool allows you to compress your games and apps folders so you can free up GB of disk space. With the CompactGUI tool, you will be able to reduce the size of games and programs by up to 60%.
Before we tell you how to use the CompactGUI tool, let's take a look at the integrated compact operating system tool. Compact OS is a command line utility that can compress the entire Windows 10 operating system to reduce free disk space. We talk about it in our guide on how to compress your Windows 10 installation to reduce disk space usage.
According to the developer of the tool, the new compression algorithm introduced in Windows 10 for the Compact OS functionality is similar to the NTFS-LZNT1 compression (right click> properties> compress to save space) that we have all used but much more efficient, multi - threaded and designed for use in executable programs with negligible loss of performance.
We recommend XPRESS8K or XPRESS16K to compress games and programs. XPRESS4K is the fastest compression method, but it may not release a significant amount of free space. Compression of the LZX method is the slowest but drastically reduces the size of games and programs. The problem is that highly compressed files could add more CPU load and affect overall performance.
At the launch of Microsoft's Flight Simulator, the installation could eat up 170 GB, the most recent patch will reduce this considerably. The disk space requirement for Flight Simulator has been reduced to 83 GB with that last update. That's good news for simmers with a smaller SSD for example. Also on console it helps preventing you to free up storage space. 2ff7e9595c
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