Windows uncompress c drive

Become a Patron of Ask Leo! File compression uses various algorithms to reduce the physical space taken up by a file without loss of any information. However, file compression is still supported. Before you decompress files, make sure you have enough free space available — the files will take up more room when they are not compressed. Right-click on the compressed folder , click on Properties , and then click on Advanced. Un check that and click OK. This will return you to the basic properties for the folder.

You can uncompress just the folder and not its contents. Any new files placed in the folder will not be compressed automatically. Do that and click OK.

Depending on the size of the folder and its contents, this operation can take some time. Once complete, the folder and everything within it will no longer be compressed. The only problem with this approach is that you need to operate on a compressed folder to uncompress it and its contents.

If a folder itself is not compressed, but contains many compressed files, you have to multi-select the individual files to perform the operation above. The command-line utility Compact is used to control Windows File Compression. In it are several files which are also compressed. Worth noting is that the Compact command shows the effects of compression and the space saved for each file. Files which are already compressed like the. Other files, like the. You may not know where all of your compressed files are.

No problem: just run Compact on the entire hard disk. I am not a fan of the built-in Windows disk compression. The technology is sound, but its usefulness has declined over time. Hard disks are huge and relatively inexpensive these days. Particularly on those older machines, compression and decompression take additional CPU resources that could adversely impact your overall performance.

Many files are compressed already — in fact, many of the very files you might find taking up much of your hard disk space are. All of your music files mp3 and other formats , video files mp4, mov, wmv, and more , and even the latest formats used by Microsoft Office, such as. File system compression will not compress them by much more; in some cases, it can even make them take up a little more space.

These days, I advise against using Windows File compression unless you really have no other options. Subscribe to Confident Computing! Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week. Hi, The first link is for folders or files. But some windows files and other programs do not allow to uncompress C Drive full. Telman Yusifov. I compressed C drive before because I didn't have enough space. But then I tried to decompress it had some problems such as some programs are in use such as spawfile.

I tried to restart the laptop and try again but it gave the same error. I searched on Google. I saw Powershell and Safe mode. But I could not try any of them. Please help me. These errors indicate that the system needs additional free space to perform a compression. The system is not designed to manipulate the data in place on the disk. Additional space is needed to buffer the user data and to possibly hold additional file system metadata.

The amount of additional free space required depends on the cluster size, file size, and available space. Message Edited by tgsmith on AM. Thanks Denny and tgsmith for the replys. It seems that I mistook my internet provider having problems yesterday for blaming my slow internet experience on compressing my files. I haven't done any decompressing so far. Another problem I'm having is that Internet Explorer has a 6 second delay on its initial opening.

Going site to site after that is no problem. This started a few days ago after I updated Java and Real Player. I've tried 3 system restore points before that time and I get the notice that it can't be done. Did compressing files not accessed in over 50 days on my C: drive cause this? I guess the only way to correct the 6 second delay for Internet Explorer to open is to take my operating system back to factory settings and start over.

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