Also, if the compression utility's device driver was uninstalled or became corrupted, all data on the disk would be lost.ĭisk compression utilities were popular especially in the early 1990s, when microcomputer hard disks were still relatively small (20 to 80 megabytes). The compression/expansion process adds a small amount of overhead to disk access and may complicate error recovery on the affected volume. Since all software applications access the hard disk using these routines, they continue to work after disk compression has been installed. A disk compression utility overrides the standard operating system routines. When information needs to be read, the utility will decompress the information. When information needs to be stored to the hard disk, the utility will compress the information. Unlike a file compression utility which compresses only specified files – and which requires the user designate the files to be compressed – an on-the-fly disk compression utility works automatically without the user needing to be aware of its existence. A disk compression utility increases the amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive of given size.
