CompactGUI
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No increase in usable disk space
I used the program for multiple games with varying results.
However, in each one of them it retains the Size
parameter and only Size on disk
changes.
That is correct, if I am not mistaken. The compression is changing how much space it takes up on the disk, but the file itself didn't change so the size stays the same, but the size on disk changes, indicating either a sparse allocation or a compressed stream
This is how the file system works, not just for compression. If you format a flash drive with very large clusters and fill it with small files the size on disk will be much larger than its size from cluster slack waste.
Yeah the overall size remains the same. But the size on disk shrinks down. So it still allows you to store more on the hard disk (if it's formatted as NTFS). At least that's what I've found. Pretty interesting. But what I've noticed is that if you try to transfer the compressed files to another drive or PC, you'll be copying files of the original size. And if you try and shrink it down on another drive or PC after it's been compressed at the original location, it won't work. But if you copy the original files (uncompressed), and then shrink them down there, it will work. It's strange.
it depends on how you transfer them and to what filesystem. Most if not all of the compression schemas work by putting a stub in the main stream and then using a alternate data stream to hold the compressed data. If you copy to a filesystem or system that does not understand the compressed format or doesn't support ADS, the compression is lost
In this case you've saved 2.7Gb of usable space.