Will this command really shrink Windows 10?
QI have an Acer Aspire One Cloudbook 14 with Windows 10 Home. As my device has just 32GB of total storage I was looking for ways to free up space by shrinking stuff. I came across a suggestion that typing the command compact.exe / compactos: always will compress Windows. Is this true? John Foulkes
AYes, it’s true.
The little-known ‘compact’ command works much like any other compression system, by using clever maths to shrink files so that they take up less space. Usefully, though, it is also able to apply its file-shrinking magic to operating system files and folders. How much space will be saved depends on many factors, but you can probably expect to free up at least a gigabyte or two — so it’s well worth a go on your storage-starved system. If nothing else, it’s free to try and easy to do.
Compact is safe to use but do back up before proceeding. Also ensure that your laptop is plugged in to and switched on at the mains: the process can take a couple of hours to complete, and you really don’t want the battery running out halfway through. Now click Start, type cmd and then right-click cmd (or Command Prompt) and choose ‘Run as administrator’. At the prompt, carefully type compact.exe /compactos: always (see screenshot) and press Enter.
There’s nothing else to do but wait, so have a cup of tea — or several. When you return, the Command Prompt window should display a message showing how much space has been saved (in bytes, so it’ll be in the billions, with one billion being about 1GB). Click the X to close the window and you’re ready. We should say that it’s possible that your laptop will feel a little slower here and there. That’s normal, as Windows 10 works harder when its own files are compressed — but most of the time the performance difference will be negligible. If you find that things have become too slow, you can reverse the process by following the same procedure but typing instead the command compact.exe /compactos:never.