Windows 7 - Disk Cleanup: Why was Compress Old Files removed?

Hey there,

I migrated from WinXP Home to Windows 7 Pro, so I do realize I skipped a generation when I ask this question.

I found that the Compress Old Files helped save me gigabytes of space at times. The philosophy as I interpreted it made sense - if you didn't use files, it's safe to trade access performance for increased disk space.

The only thing I can think of is that with the advent of extremely cheap storage, it was viewed as unessential.

What d'you think?

--Red

Welcome Red

I think that the answer that you are seeking varies by individual. When I bought my current computer it came with a 500gb hard drive. I had it for a year and a half and am using less than 100gb plus a backup partition, for me I have no need to compress and totally unessential

On the other hand, it I were using 475gb of my 500, the compressed feature would be worthwhile. Even with cheap space, unless an individual is one of the luck few, in today's economy, with money to burn, I think that it should be used.

As I said, subjective question with a subjective answer, be prepared for another 2 dozen replies.

I think you're right.

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The Compress Old Files option made running Disk Cleanup so slow it was useless - better it should run faster so people will use it.

Argh, I finally found the solution! NTFS Compressor - 2005 open source yada yada.... I hate how they removed this feature from Windows 7, shoulda just kept the option at the very least. This program though old seems to have many options, exclude many media files, compress based on numbers of days without access, and of course compress based on compressibility. Figured I'd post this since general google searches got me nothing other than the everyones got a lot of disc space so forget about it answer.

Forget file compression. If space gets tight, buy another hard drive. I picked up a 1.5 Terabyte 7200RPM SATA drive for $73, shipping was free.

Windows had no way of knowing if it was compressing "old" files that were in the \Windows or \Program Files folder, and with the advent of junctions and SxS in critical file and folder locations instead of mostly straight files like you would have in XP and 2000, this option really made little sense. Since compressing Windows files (especially ones with junctions to WinSxS) causes an inordinate performance hit on older machines, having the ability to compress files from Explorer as necessary, as well as the "Compress old files..." option could (and did, a lot of times) cause the disk cleanup UI to hang, it seems likely this was removed under the guise of "disk storage is ubiquitous and cheap nowadays" when in reality it was a pretty buggy option to begin with on large volumes and didn't come into the new century ready for a new OS model like Vista. Anyone who used this on XP on larger disks knows the hangs I speak of, and it appears that on Vista (and moreso Windows 7), this option is gone in favor of using Windows Backup or a 3rd party archival solution to remove old files rather than compressing them. If you have a client with a large drive full and want to compress data, the problem isn't the data - it's that you're storing too much on your system without using proper archival solutions. If you have a file server with this problem, you either didn't scale properly and need to add more disks, or you need to implement nearline and long-term storage solutions - compression is a BAD idea in most scenarios nowadays.