Batu69 Posted July 28, 2016 Share Posted July 28, 2016 Compact OS is a new command line tool that Microsoft introduced in the Windows 10 operating system in an effort to reduce the system's disk footprint. Probably the biggest change to previous versions of Windows in this regard is that Windows 10 does not need recovery images anymore, as the operating system will use existing files for that instead. Compact OS is a new compression mechanism which takes files of the operating system and puts them in a (hidden) compressed container. There is a lot that you can do with Compact OS, especially when it comes to optimizing and deploying images. What's probably most interesting from an end-user's perspective is that you may change from a non-compacted to a compacted OS on a running system. Free up Windows 10 Disk Space with Compact OS If you do that, you may free up several Gigabytes of storage on the hard drive because of it. Mileage may vary but I have yet to come upon a system where the Compact OS operation would not free up at least 2 Gigabytes of space. 2 Gigabytes may not be much depending on available hard drive space. Running the operation makes sense if Windows is installed on a partition with little hard drive space, or a Solid State Drive that is low on space. All commands are run from an elevated command prompt. Tap on the Windows-key. Type cmd.exe Hold down Shift and CTRL. Select the Command Prompt result to open an elevated command prompt. Determine the state of OS binaries Before you do any compacting, you may want to determine the current state of OS binaries to find out whether the OS is already compressed. Run the following command to determine that: compact.exe /q The command line tool returns information about the state. This includes how many files are compressed or not compressed, the compression ratio, and how many bytes of data are stored in the compressed container. If the compression ratio is 1,0 to 1 or close to that, then the OS is not compressed. Compressing the OS binaries to save up disk space in Windows 10 Compression may impact performance under certain circumstances but it should not be noticeable on most systems. Please note that you can go back to an uncompressed state at any point in time if you notice issues after compressing the OS. Also, to be on the safe side, it is recommended to back up important data before you continue. Run the following command to compress OS binaries: compact.exe /CompactOS:always The operation may take several minutes to complete (on some systems 20 or more minutes). The amount of space you save depends on a number of factors. A test on the latest Insider Build installation of Windows 10 saved more than 2 Gigabyte of disk space after the compression. To revert the change later on, run the following command to uncompress the data: compact.exe /CompactOS:never The operation does not take as long as the compression usually. Windows will occupy more disk space afterwards though so keep that in mind. Article source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vitorio Posted July 28, 2016 Share Posted July 28, 2016 Still prefer MS Restore Point. It is done automatically. Sometimes do not worked bu this the risk is fine for me. Best solution always backup!!!. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tiliarou Posted July 28, 2016 Share Posted July 28, 2016 "Compression may impact performance under certain circumstances but it should not be noticeable on most systems." Anyone did real quantitative testing ? Like benchmark in-game ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Holmes Posted July 28, 2016 Share Posted July 28, 2016 I have never used compression in windows and Im not going to start now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete 12 Posted July 28, 2016 Share Posted July 28, 2016 I dont think its a very good idea for SSD............. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shorty6100 Posted July 28, 2016 Share Posted July 28, 2016 Saved 1.5 GB disk space. No issues noted on SSD. Will update if issues arise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sylence Posted July 28, 2016 Share Posted July 28, 2016 Yeah on SSDs there won't be any significant improvements as the Windows 10 is made in a way to fully use SSD's capabilities, but on normal HDDs it's different Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pc71520 Posted July 28, 2016 Share Posted July 28, 2016 3 hours ago, Holmes said: I have never used compression in windows and I'm not going to start now. Same, here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjall Posted August 19, 2016 Share Posted August 19, 2016 I would need this now as I am running low on my SSD, it's not a bad option, good to have Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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