De-compress drive? This isn't possible, is it?

[Stanley_Kubrick]

Hey Howdy Hey Tech Mastahs!

I'm looking at a drive in win98 that must have been an upgrade from 95. it is fat16 and according to compression properties has 1.9 GB of data on a 1.8 GB drive.

Anyhoo this guy wants a 20GB drive added for storage, then wants the primary drive un-compressed. I told him I had my doubts that we would be able to do it and that we would be looking at FDISK/FORMAT, but that i would research it... Hah.

So, this isn't possible at all is it?

Or is it?

Thanks in Advance!

[shamus]

As long as you move enough data to the 20 gig so there is room for the remaining data on the primary (after it's uncompressed) it should work fine without the need to fdisk\format.

[Gameguru]

[quote]Originally posted by Stanley_Kubrick:
<strong>Hey Howdy Hey Tech Mastahs!

I'm looking at a drive in win98 that must have been an upgrade from 95. it is fat16 and according to compression properties has 1.9 GB of data on a 1.8 GB drive.</strong><hr></blockquote>


This is exactly the reason the first thing that I do when installing 98 is uncheck the disk compression tools. I HATE that program and the average user will use it and get him/herself in deep poo.

As for your problem, as long as the new drive is recognized in windows(and windows works on the old drive) you should have no problems decompressing the data to the newer drive.

Good luck.

[Hippie_Tech]

All I can say is...GOOD LUCK.
I have had nothing but problems with decompressing data off a compressed drive. I always feel a sense of panic when I see someone has compressed a drive. I hate that utility.
I will admit that most of the time I see a compressed drive is after something bad has happened. And, of course, the customer has not backed up their data. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

[freddy]

[quote]Originally posted by Hippie_Tech:
<strong>All I can say is...GOOD LUCK.
I have had nothing but problems with decompressing data off a compressed drive. I always feel a sense of panic when I see someone has compressed a drive. I hate that utility.
I will admit that most of the time I see a compressed drive is after something bad has happened. And, of course, the customer has not backed up their data. </strong><hr></blockquote>

hav,nt had to do this (thank god) ,,

the way I would look at it would be to back up all personal files, delete all major progs untill enough room was made to decompress , then do it, ghost it , write back (fat 32) and reinstall major progs etc ,

but I would be more inclined to reinstall win9x on the new drive , then install nessesarry progs , copy personal data over , then forget the orig drive,


obviously u are gonna get more views here , but is his orig drive (prob cluttered) that important?

[xschmittyx]

I hope you can get it to work. I have never been victorious while working with compression.

[TangleWeb]

I get sort of "evangelical" on this topic. The "primary" drive will be the NEW drive, not the original drive. The old drive can be removed entirely, or relegated to a slave position for back-ups or whatever. You don't buy a bigger, faster, newer, more reliable drive & make it a slave to the original small, slow drive. To benefit from the increased speed, the OS MUST be on the new drive.

If it were me, I'd put a NIC in it, put it on my little home network & copy the "User Data" to another PC then install the new drive using the disk installation utility if necessary. Then perform a clean install of the OS & all apps. Trying to uninstall apps & delete unnecessary files to make room for uncompressing the compressed drive is a path to nothing but headaches & poor performance. A software rebuild is the correct solution.

[Antimatter]

My procedure is to check to see if a BIOS upgrade or drive overlay is required then run fdisk and format /s on the new drive in the client's machine.
While doing this I will copy the client's data off the current HDD in my test machine. If the drive is compressed, copy the hidden host files as well.
It's then a simple matter of copying all the clients data onto the new drive, plugging both drives back into their system(new drive as primary master) and removing compression from the old secondary drive. The only difference the client will notice is that it's faster.

[Shard92]

to answer your question, yes it's possible to uncompress the drive. But like everyone else I'll tell you it's not easy. Unlike what most have said, I have done it, but it can be a royal pain. And like they said you need to make space for the files as they uncompress. I don't remember if you can uncompress them to a different drive or not... I don't think you can, but I've never tried.

GLSmith

Ps. agree you should put new drive first. Also tell him not to use the compression utility. It slows things down and just plain causes problems. Most software these days doesn't like being compressed anyways...