Compressed Files/Western Digital

[Chip Fossa]

I recently bought a Western Digital 15.3 GB
harddrive kit and I'm getting ready to install it. In WD's literature is a warning about compressed files.
My question is, once a ZIP file is opened
[unzipped], is the file still considered a
compression file? Will the computer see it
as a compression file?
Thanks, anyone....Chip

[Brad Bechtel]

No.
The type of compression a ZIP file uses is different from the compressed files which Western Digital is warning you about. Once you've uncompressed the ZIP file, the result is a regular file that should work correctly on any disk.

Among other things, Windows NT Server has the ability to compress files on an NTFS formatted drive to save space. I believe this is the type of compression they're referring to in their warning. They could also be referring to third-party compression schemes designed to compress and uncompress files on the fly.

Either way, a ZIP file will not be affected, nor will it affect, the hard drive.

[RickRichtmyer]

Chip,

I doubt that Western Digital is referring to ZIP files. What they are likely talking about is disk compression schemes. This was used back in the days when hard drives typically were under 100MB or so. What it did was allow you to set up your system so that all files were compressed when written to the disk, but were automatically uncompressed when loaded into memory. This is very much like ZIPping the files but it's user transparent (when it works). I think think it was called double space (dblspace).

If you are not running DBLSPACE, you can ignore this caveat.

------------------
Rick Richtmyer
users.erols.com/rickrichtmyer

[Chip Fossa]

Thanks Brad and Rick. I have huge UNZIPPED
files of guitar tablature and I'd hate to have to back up all these. It would take me
to the next millenium to accomplish this.
Chips Ahoy