C:\ Compression, is it worth it.

[Fielder 3,840]

I use a freeware app called TreeSize Free. It shows how much is in each folder in File Explorer. It is maybe 25 times faster than using right click properties in file explorer. TS F integrates itself into the right click context menu of file explorer.

https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/comparison.shtml

[109Sqn 1,614]

21 hours ago, somiller said:

My suggestion would be to migrate to a larger drive.

 If money is not an object, I'd absolutely agree

19 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

Your system disk will grow just because of archived Win10 updates even without MSFS installed.

On older installs you can recover a fair bit of drive space by deleting older update install files and windows installs:

How to Delete Old Windows Update Files ...

I regularly simply right-click on my C drive, select Disk Clean-up, then Clean up System Files and choose what to delete. Same process but quicker way to get there IMO.

25 minutes ago, mistercoffee1 said:

If your C:\ drive is truly for OS only, it should be nowhere close to filling a 500GB drive.  

My C drive is 250GB (222GB capacity in Properties) and I recently did a fresh install of Win11. I have used space of only 43.3GB after re-installing MSFS and small monitoring apps such as CPU-Z, all on other drives. C will always end up with extra files associated with pretty much any program you install, regardless of where you put the program itself. I always install whatever I can outside of the C drive. Even when I eventually re-install everything I previously had on, I won't be adding much more bloat to C in the process.

As for compressing the C drive, I never compress either my C drive or any drive I install programs on. Only data drives (Documents, Photos, Videos etc) get compressed.

I also move all the "default folders" as I call them (Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos) from C to my data drive. To do this, right-click each folder, select Properties and the Location tab and Find Target to browse for the location you want to move the folder to. That way, any programs you install should save any related files to the new drive instead of C. For example, screen captures or video captures should no longer clog up the C drive.

[crimplene 634]

Compressing music, video or photo files is the most useless thing I ever heard of. They already are compressed, you achieve nothing.

[109Sqn 1,614]

7 hours ago, crimplene said:

Compressing music, video or photo files is the most useless thing I ever heard of. They already are compressed, you achieve nothing.

It's the drives I compress rather than the individual files. They reside on drives with other types of data, so get compressed as a by-product of that, so to speak. I work with RAW files, so compressing tens of thousands of those will save a noticeable amount of space overall. Personally, I've heard of many more useless things than that in my life, many of which we are discouraged from talking about in these forums.🤐😉

[crimplene 634]

1 hour ago, 109Sqn said:

It's the drives I compress rather than the individual files. They reside on drives with other types of data, so get compressed as a by-product of that, so to speak. I work with RAW files, so compressing tens of thousands of those will save a noticeable amount of space overall. Personally, I've heard of many more useless things than that in my life, many of which we are discouraged from talking about in these forums.🤐😉

Ah, ok. 🙂  Audio raw files I don't know, maybe it helps. With Canon raw files I have to say that they are already compressed by the camera and an additional compression does almost nothing - about 1%.

With MSFS scenery and aircraft files compression reduces file size quite a lot, actually.

[BufordTX 54]

You know Win10 will automatically and transparently compress files that aren’t used much (basis some criteria)? 
 

This can be switched off with a reg key. 

[RaptyrOne 1,463]

I’m sure compressing files or worse, entire drives, slows the PC down. Especially if they are frequently accessed files or folders. Those files need to be decompressed before they can be read. Extra work for the CPU. If running a SSD, also implies you are effectively reducing performance of the SSD. Data is no longer read/write at published speeds. It is limited by how quickly files can be decompressed. It’s an ugly fix to a disk space problem.

[Fielder 3,840]

I use iOBIT Advanced System Care. It cleans up more, for instance unused registry entries. Also their iOBIT Uninstaller which is even more useful to me. Windows almost never completely uninstalls programs when they are removed. The first one is nagware (ASC). But if you tire of its popups you can uninstall it and quickly install it when you want to clean your disc every couple months. Long time user of both (maybe 10 years). I just use the free versions.

I set ASC to not delete browser history when it runs the 'Privacy Sweep' part by unticking the box to delete browser history.

https://www.iobit.com/en/advancedsystemcarefree.php

[109Sqn 1,614]

6 hours ago, crimplene said:

With MSFS scenery and aircraft files compression reduces file size quite a lot, actually

Indeed, although I don't know how MSFS handles those files - caching them somewhere else or accessing them as necessary from their saved location - so I don't compress them. If the sim caches them, then I would be happy to compress the files. If it doesn't, then I can imagine the sim slowing or stuttering as it regularly decompresses files before being able to implement them into the current flight. Not something you'd want.

[109Sqn 1,614]

5 hours ago, RaptyrOne said:

I’m sure compressing files or worse, entire drives, slows the PC down. Especially if they are frequently accessed files or folders. Those files need to be decompressed before they can be read. Extra work for the CPU. If running a SSD, also implies you are effectively reducing performance of the SSD. Data is no longer read/write at published speeds. It is limited by how quickly files can be decompressed. It’s an ugly fix to a disk space problem.

I'm sure it does slow it down to some degree. Whether that's a significant amount will depend both on the application and the user (i.e. if the slowdown is a hindrance to the user). As stated above, I don't compress my MSFS files at all - it's for that reason I upgraded from a 1TB to a 2TB M.2 SSD for all my add-ons, rather than compressing the files on the original drive.

Back to my point of compressing the other data on my system, it's largely archived data which won't be accessed on a regular basis, so the tiny amount of extra time to retrieve it (which I won't even notice) is irrelevant to me. As I say, neither my Windows drive or the drives I install any programs to (including MSFS itself) are compressed - that undoubtably would slow things down, and even potentially cause problems with some of those programs.

[109Sqn 1,614]

4 hours ago, Fielder said:

I use iOBIT Advanced System Care

For me, Advanced Uninstaller Pro does what I need it to. Also free.

[TurboKen 222]

As others have said try removing any extra stuff, old downloads or update files. But you DO NOT want to compress the drive. SSD's are cheap buy a larger one and either re-install or just clone the drive.