Question: How Do I Compress a Drive in Windows 10?

How do I compress a hard drive?

To compress an entire hard drive, follow these steps:

1. Open the Computer window. …
2. Right-click a drive icon and choose Properties from the shortcut menu.
3. Place a check mark by the item Compress This Drive to Save Disk Space.
4. Click the Apply button.

What does it mean to compress a drive?

When you load a compressed file, the CPU has to do more work decompressing it. However, that compressed file is smaller on the disk, so your computer can load the compressed data from disk faster. On a computer with a fast CPU but a slow hard drive, reading a compressed file might actually be faster.