Compress old files

[jabarnutcase]

Hi guys.
This is probably a dumb question, but what the hell.
I have XP pro and occasionally use the "disk cleanup" utility.

One of the options you can check is to "compress old files". Under options, you can also specify how many days windows waits to compress an "unaccessed file". (The default on mine was set to 50 days)

Now here's the dumb part.
It only recently dawned on me what it was doing. I usually never had the box checked because it was always empty. When it did show to be taking up some space, I mistakenly thought I was dumping "old compresses files" rather than "compressing old files" that I dont use! :rolleyes:

OK, Now the question...I wonder what files I compressed, what they are, and where the heck do they end up? :confused:

I did a little looking around in the help section and it appears if you ever need to access these files in the future, (What ever and where ever they are!), you can do so without even knowing they were compresses in the first place!
There! Have I confused everyone now? :p

BTW-I'm using NTFS file system

Thanks geeksters :D

[mjc]

That is one of the features of XP that I really like.....seemless file compression.

You can actually compress most files and XP will decompress them on the fly. With large documents this can mean a significant space savings. With music or pics.....not much, because they are already rather heavily compressed (except for bmp and wav files).

[jabarnutcase]

Thanks mjc-
It appears I have been using a feature of XP then all along, that I guess I never knew existed!

As for why I just woke up at 3:00am out of the blue and happened to see I had mail (your reply), is another mystery altogether!

Have a great night! ( I'm going back to sleep like "normal" east coasters)...Is there such a thing? :confused: :D