Windows 10: NTFS disk compression, bizarre behavior

Discus and support NTFS disk compression, bizarre behavior in Windows 10 Support to solve the problem; Hello. I am a newbie here (Windows 10 Build 18363). Thanks for having me. I used to repair software and hardware issues in a Windows environment, so I... Discussion in 'Windows 10 Support' started by gvoice2006, May 4, 2021.

  1. NTFS disk compression, bizarre behavior


    Hello. I am a newbie here (Windows 10 Build 18363). Thanks for having me. I used to repair software and hardware issues in a Windows environment, so I am tech savvy. I have several disks, including two SSDs. Recently, I noticed my primary SSD was filling up. Every day. another gigabyte or two would be added, mostly log files, and I was reaching my limit, which, as you probably all know, causes Windows 10 to start malfunctioning. And the malfunctions can be very bizarre and difficult to diagnose, so it is very important to keep a certain amount of free space on your disk. To fix this, I decided to try NTFS disk compression, which I had never done before. I chose to compress a system folder where Windows Installer updates are stored. Afterward, my disk size went from 989 GB to 43 GB, which stunned me. Please note that I did not opt in to compress the entire disk, just this one folder. Then I decided to decompress the folder, do a full backup, and then reinstate disk compression again via an elevated CMD command. Incredibly, after disabling disk compression, my full size state still only went back to about 83 GB, instead of the 989 GB it had reached before I started tinkering. Does anyone have any explanation for what is happening? I would be most grateful for your help. Thank you.

    :)
     
    gvoice2006, May 4, 2021
    #1

  2. NTFS disk compression, bizarre behavior

    Hello. I am a newbie here (Windows 10 Build 18363). Thanks for having me. I used to repair software and hardware issues in a Windows environment, so I am tech savvy. I have several disks, including two SSDs. Recently, I noticed my primary SSD was filling up. Every day. another gigabyte or two would be added, mostly log files, and I was reaching my limit, which, as you probably all know, causes Windows 10 to start malfunctioning. And the malfunctions can be very bizarre and difficult to diagnose, so it is very important to keep a certain amount of free space on your disk. To fix this, I decided to try NTFS disk compression, which I had never done before. I chose to compress a system folder where Windows Installer updates are stored. Afterward, my disk size went from 989 GB to 43 GB, which stunned me. Please note that I did not opt in to compress the entire disk, just this one folder. Then I decided to decompress the folder, do a full backup, and then reinstate disk compression again via an elevated CMD command. Incredibly, after disabling disk compression, my full size state still only went back to about 83 GB, instead of the 989 GB it had reached before I started tinkering. Does anyone have any explanation for what is happening? I would be most grateful for your help. Thank you.
     
    gvoice2006, May 4, 2021
    #2
  3. NTFS disk compression, bizarre behavior

    My thought is, maybe Windows did a disk cleanup before it applied the compression and cleared out a lot of old log and installation files and that is what is causing the disk usage discrepancy.
     
    ArazelEternal, May 4, 2021
    #3
  4. mamyot0 Win User

    NTFS disk compression, bizarre behavior

    NTFS Compression of copied files

    I'm experiencing an odd issue in Windows 10 that involves copying files that are compressed using the NTFS filesystem to another folder that has the compression flag set (so that when the file is
    copied, not moved, it is compressed in the destination folder).

    The issue is that when the file is copied to the folder, the filesystem is not releasing the uncompressed copy of the file (as it should) after compressing. Thus, the disk is recognizing that
    double the space is needed to store the file (e.g. if the file was 500MB, the remaining capacity for the disk will be 1000MB less). In Windows 7, this behavior is not being seen (i.e. after the file is compressed, the uncompressed file is released,
    showing the correct amount of space used.)

    I've experienced this on several (actually all) Windows 10 installs, so I'm wondering if anybody else has seen this.

    Of course, restarting the computer seems to correct the reported free disk space remaining, but while in a session, I've had to decompress a file manually, then recompress it to have the filesystem report the correct size. The system believes that much more
    disk space is being consumed that what is really there, and it is leading to insufficient disk space errors (in testing out the problem, I made a dummy partition and copied the compressed file to it).

    I would write this off as a corrupted installation, but I've seen it on good installs also. I've also reported the problem in the Windows feedback community, in case it is an actual bug.

    Thanks for any help.
     
    mamyot0, May 4, 2021
    #4
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NTFS disk compression, bizarre behavior

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