A Yes, yes, and it depends. You can compress floppy disks and other removable media in the same way that you can compress a hard drive. Depending on the data you are compressing, you can turn a 1.44MB floppy into a 2.5MB disk!
There are a number of compression programs available, including DriveSpace, which comes with Windows 95. To use DriveSpace, click Start--Programs--Accessories--System Tools--DriveSpace. If it has not been installed, use the Add/Remove Programs applet in Control panel: select the Windows Setup tab, highlight Disk Tools, click the Details button, and make sure that Disk compression tools is checked.
To compress a floppy disk it must have at least 512K of free space, and it must not contain a file which is larger than half of the disk's capacity.
Compressing a floppy disk is as safe as compressing a hard drive, but you should take some precautions, such as backing up your critical data first. Although it is relatively safe, and many programs have recovery features if compression fails, there are always risks involved in compressing data on any type of disk.
Before you compress your floppy disks, here are some issues to consider.
1. Performance. Even though compression is transparent to the user, each time a file is read or written to disk, the data must be decompressed or compressed, which places additional demand on your computer's processor. The faster your computer, the less performance will be affected.
2. Compatibility and Convenience. The software used to compress a floppy disk must be installed on every computer on which you intend to use the disk.
3. Effectiveness. The effectiveness of compression depends on the type of data you want to compress. The files that compress best are those which contain a lot of repetitive information, most notably text files. Program files and video files, on the other hand, won't compress significantly.
The bottom line is that if you think you will benefit from compressing floppy disks, go for it!
- Belinda Taylor