Other Compression Methods

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Compression utilities other than NTFS compression are available to compress files on computers running Windows 2000. These utilities differ from NTFS compression in the following ways:

  • They usually run only from the command line.

  • Files cannot be opened when they are in a compressed state — the file must first be decompressed by using the companion program to the one used to compress the file. When you close the file, it is saved in an uncompressed state, and you must use a program to compress it.

The Windows   2000 Resource Kit includes a compress utility, which can only be run from the command line, and two expand utilities: one runs from the command line; the other is a Windows 2000–based program. For more information about these programs, see "File System Tools" later in this chapter.

As mentioned earlier, the DoubleSpace and DriveSpace compression features in MS-DOS cannot be used when running Windows 2000.