Take the 2-minute tour ×

I wonder what are the advantages and disadvantage of using NTFS compression. I wonder does it slow things down a lot?

share|improve this question
add comment

1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote accepted

There is a decent page on Microsoft's site explaining the pros and cons.

Basically, there is a performance penalty so don't use it on files and folders you access often. A small delay incurred infrequently is probably ok for most people.

I suppose that if you are getting desparate for disk space then you may be willing to accept the performance hit and use it for more frequently used stuff.

The actual performance hit will depend very much on your machine, if you are getting short of space try it, otherwise I wouldn't bother.

share|improve this answer
Agreed: With today's large hard disks, compression is useless. –  harrymc Aug 7 '10 at 8:07
I once saw it used on a database server a couple of years ago. I almost lost it. –  David Markle Aug 7 '10 at 15:54
IMHO, with today processor to disk speed ratios, compressed filesystem may be actually faster for some operations. –  maaartinus Mar 14 '11 at 2:41
add comment

Your Answer


