Most of the digital space you have is not for free. It always comes at a cost and therefore, it is imperative that you should know how to manage your storage space whether it is of cloud or your personal computer.
One such feature to free up and optimize your storage space is called file compression. File compression compresses big files which take a huge chunk of storage space into smaller ones freeing up useful space.
Both Windows and Mac operating systems come up with their default file compression software. Besides these conventional ones, there is also a third-party application that can help you compress your files. In this post, we will have a brief look at all of them in addition to understanding what actually is file compression.
How file compression is done?
Data compression is the method of which the size of a file by re-encoding the data so that it takes up fewer bits of storage than the original file. The ability to transfer or archive the original file, restore it, and use it later is a key feature of data compression. Data compression is actually employing short forms of the data which are the actual depiction of the data. For example, we can write World Health Organization as WHO making it short and concise without changing its meaning.
The same work goes into file compression. Later on, when we need full data, we can use its opposite feature of decompressing the file to get the actual data that was stored in the file at the tie of its inception.
This is done without any external software help in some formats. Since a lot of data can be compressed without your eyes or ears knowing, digital images and music lend themselves well to fast and simple compression. This is why JPEG and MP3 file styles will keep your images and audio files limited to several MBs or KBs.
Compressing in Windows
The two of the most popular operating systems in the world come up with their own compression software. these are built-in features of the operating systems so that you do not have to buy or download any other external software.
When dealing with the Windows operating system, right-click any file or a folder which you need to be compressed. A dropdown menu will appear on the screen with several features. Select Send to and click on compressed or zipped. In this way, a new compressed file will be created with the name you desire.
Similarly, if you want to extract the contents of these zipped files or folders, you have to double-click the zipped content. A popup window will appear indicating all the files which are compressed. You can open it as per your use. For a prominent solution, unzip the folder which is the opposite of compression to use the files conveniently.
Compression in Mac
When it comes to compressing files in Mac operating system, it is pretty much similar to that of windows. Open the finder and select one or multiple files or folders to be compressed. Command + click on them to see a list of menus and choose compress from them. Compression will be done and you can rename the product as per your desire.
All you have to do to open a compressed folder is double-click on it. The directory won’t disappear, instead, a new uncompressed folder containing all of your files will appear next to it in Finder.
Thus, in the ways listed above, you can compress your files on the desktop or a laptop to free up some useful space from your PC. You can use this space for other useful items in the future.
