Page 255 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Tip

You can also jump to this cornucopia of sharing options directly from the desktop, without having
to go to your web browser first. To do that, right-click the file or folder you want to share from
your OneDrive. From the shortcut menu, choose “More OneDrive sharing options.”

Compressing Files and Folders

Today’s hard drives have greater capacities than ever, but programs and
files are much bigger, too. Running out of disk space is still a common
problem. Fortunately, Windows is especially effective at compressing files

and folders to take up less space.

Compressing files and folders can also be useful when you want to email
files to someone. That’s why Microsoft has endowed Windows with two

different schemes for compressing files and folders: NTFS compression for
storing files on your hard drive, and zipped folders for files that might have
to be transferred.

NTFS Compression

Windows 10, since you asked, requires a hard drive that’s formatted using a
software scheme called NTFS. And among its virtues is, you guessed it,

NTFS compression.

This compression scheme is especially likable because it’s completely
invisible. Windows automatically compresses and decompresses your files,
almost instantaneously. At some point, you may even forget you’ve turned

it on. Consider:

Whenever you open a compressed file, Windows quickly and
invisibly expands it to its original form so you can edit it. When
you close the file again, Windows instantly recompresses it.

If you send compressed files (via disk or email, for example) to a
PC whose hard drive doesn’t use NTFS formatting, Windows once

again decompresses them, quickly and invisibly.