

XtraDrive from Integrated Information Technology (IIT).



Some of the initial disk compression solutions were hardware-assisted and utilized add-on compressor/decompressor coprocessor cards in addition to a software driver. Disk compression fell into disuse by the late 1990s, as advances in hard drive technology and manufacturing led to increased capacities and lower prices.Ĭommon disk compression solutions Standalone hardware A good disk compression utility could, on average, double the available space with negligible speed loss. For the users who bought disk compression applications, the software proved to be in the short term a more economic means of acquiring more disk space as opposed to replacing their current drive with a larger one. Hard drives were also rather expensive at the time, costing roughly 10 USD per megabyte. Since all software applications access the hard disk using these routines, they continue to work after disk compression has been installed.ĭisk compression utilities were popular especially in the early 1990s, when microcomputer hard disks were still relatively small (20 to 80 megabytes). A disk compression utility overrides the standard operating system routines. When information needs to be read, the utility decompresses the information. When information needs to be stored to the hard disk, the utility compresses the information. On-the-fly disk compression is therefore also known as transparent, real-time or online disk compression. Unlike a file compression utility, which compresses only specified files-and which requires the user to designate the files to be compressed-an on-the-fly disk compression utility works automatically through resident software without the user needing to be aware of its existence. JSTOR ( April 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)Ī disk compression software utility increases the amount of information that can be stored on a hard disk drive of given size.Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification.
