There are many times when persons have files on their computers that are taking up a lot of space. I am quite sure that there have been times we all wished that we had more space at a particular moment when we needed to save an important file or save something else to our hard drives. This could be late in the night when all the stores are closed and ordering online would not result in you getting another hard drive turning up at your door in a few minutes. Or it could be that you do not have the ‘disposable income’ to go out and purchase another hard disk. So, the question beckons: What are you going to do to give you more space at the moment that you need it?

The simple answer to that question is File Compression. Or, as some people refer to it, File Zipping or File Archiving. One good thing about file compression is that it is quite easy. I am sure you have heard about programs like WinZip, WinAce, and 123Zip, among others. For the most part, these are freeware programs. Others are shareware while others have to be paid for after a trial period so as to ensure that they continue to work. No matter which type of compression program you choose, they are quite user friendly. My personal favourite over the years has been WinZip. It has a nice user interface and handles just about any size file.

Now, back to your computer with limited space. Let us say that you have a 40 Gig hard drive that has its space reduced to about 3 Gigs. You have a document that is about 3.5 Gigs big (remember these are all hypothetical figures) that needs to be saved. Now, let’s say that you have some files that are not really used (files that you want to keep) but are just sitting there on your hard drive. A quick solution to free up some space is to use a file compression utility to ’squeeze’ some of the ‘juice’ out of those files. Zip them up, saving them where you can remeber to find them. After your files have been compressed, simply delete the original files (uncompressed files) from your hard drive. Voila! You have more space that will allow you to save your 3.5 Gig file in just a few minutes.

One thing to keep in mind is that each file compression utility compresses files at different ratios. For example, you may have 30 Mb worth of files to compress. If you use WinZip, it may compress the files to about 25% of the original size, i.e. 7.5 Mb. If you use WinAce, it may compress the files to 10 Mb, roughly 33% of the original file size. The important thing to do when searching for a File Compression Program is to check out the description of the software and read the help files so as to get an idea of how well it works. When you have checked out a few of them, you will be able to make a more informed decision as to which one to get.

As I said earlier, I have been using file compression utilities for many years now. I have seen the benefits and disadvantages of many of them. And I will continue to use them. The less space files take up on your hard drive is the more space you have to save your work. Even when uploading or downloading, the smaller the file is the quicker it transfers.

Here a few File Compression Utilities I have used in the past and still use to an extent today:

WinZip
WinAce
PKWare
PowerZip
WinRAR
Alpha Zip
7-Zip

All the best with your file compressing. Oh, by the way a quick note: The same programs that you use to compress your files are usually able to decompress the files when you are ready to use them.