Windows 10: How to reverse the automatic compression of all files

After an update that I received today every file on my C: drive is showing the 2 blue arrows pointing at each other, indicating that they have been compressed. I have 'compress files to save disk space' disabled on the disk properties (have never turned it on) and >30GB free on my disk drive.


How do I reverse this?


Thanks

:)

 

Files in C: drive automatically compressing?

As you may already know, if this feature is on, every new folder/file you add starts off automatically compressed. If you would like to turn it off for the whole drive, kindly follow these steps:

• Start File Explorer . In the left pane, right-click on the drive that you would not want to be compressed.
• Click Properties.
• Make sure that the Compress this drive to save disk space box is unchecked.
• Click OK then Apply.

Let us know if you need further assistance.

 

Files in C: drive automatically compressing?

Hi Marvin,

You can set the compression state of folders and compress or decompress files by using My Computer or a command-line program called Compact. We recommend following these steps to set a folder in a decompression state:

• 
  Start Windows Explorer . In the left pane, select the folder you want to compress or decompress.
  
• 
  On the File menu, click Properties to display the
  Properties dialog box.
  
• 
  On the General tab, click Advanced .
  
• 
  In the Advanced Attributes dialog box, clear the Compress contents to save disk space check box, and then click
  OK .
  
• 
  In the Properties dialog box, click OK .
  
• 
  To keep existing files or subfolders in the NTFS folders in their current compression state, click
  Apply changes to this folder only , and then click OK .
  

Let us know if you need further help.

 

Compress files??

It all depends on the contents. Back in the early days of DVD games, they had plenty of space compared to CD's. So they left stuff uncompressed on the DVD itself. Compressing such ISO image would result in very high compression ratio. But these days, even DVD discs are becoming small and game companies are already using data compression to fit more data on the same DVD. And since you cannot compress already compressed data, you're seeing more and more of the 99% compresion ratio moments.

Good examples of such scenarios is when you want to compres uncompressed WAV file and a MP3 file. WAV is not compressed and you can decrease its size significantly. You might gain few kilobytes when trying to compress already compressed MP3. The same is with images. You can compress BMP images rather well but when compressing JPG images, you won't really gain anything as its already compressed.

There are few very specialized algorithms that may gain some more compression out of already compressed data, but the gains are usually very small and usually not worth the extra compression time needed to perform the compression itself. Plus you can only use them to compress very specific data files.