Why when you do a disk clean-up using the windows clean up,

[yy4me]

do there always seem to be about 300,000 compressed old files? What are they and should I be finding some way to get rid of them?

(Patience folks, its me again..the old granny with no computer savvy at all)

[CK_John]

1. You could start a flame war about using compression or not. These are files

that have not been used for a period of time. MS will compress these on the hard drive saving some space, then if they are needed MS will uncompress them to use.

If you have an older system with a hard drive of around 40 gigs you may need the space. The new monster drives usually have plenty of space.

I would defrag the drive before I turn on the compression option. (You can unckeck or check the box for compression in the disk cleanup menu).

I have never found it to be a problem.

[BlueJazz]

2. Yep...when drives were small and processors were not so powerful...

..compression was (sometimes) needed.

With the Monster drives we have today...it's not needed...

[DavidMS]

3. Given that I've seen 60gb drives filled with Itunes...

That was a few years ago though and I know that hard drives have gotten bigger, but the sizes of media files is growing too.

I think that for a long time home users will be turning on compression.

That said it takes many more MP3s to fill a modern drive.