SSD compression to increase storage on air

[Red Warrior]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone had thought about or is using compression on their air's SSD to try and squeeze more usable storage out of the drive? Would this make a big hit on performance or is the SSD and CPU good enough on these machines to make it a worthwhile option?

It would be great if I could get the 128GB SSD and compress it to give more usable space and so save the $300 on the upgrade to 256GB.

Thoughts?

 

[DustinT]

I've wondered about that myself. Apple is supposedly compressed the OS a little. However, it would be nice if there was a drive level compression system available for the Mac as there is for Windows.

 

[Mr. Zarniwoop]

I was wondering if anyone had thought about or is using compression on their air's SSD to try and squeeze more usable storage out of the drive?

I use Clusters, works well in that it's an automatic and invisible file compressor, but don't expect miracles. About 20GB of space saved on my MBA, almost all from Microsoft Office documents and PDF files. Useless on pictures, music or video files.

 

[BlueRibbon]

I would say not worth it. Compression takes CPU power. It makes MBA run hotter and battery last shorter. Most of the bigger files are videos and images, and they are compressed anyway, so additional HDD compression is just a waste of CPU power.

 

[Red Warrior]

I use Clusters, works well in that it's an automatic and invisible file compressor, but don't expect miracles. About 20GB of space saved on my MBA, almost all from Microsoft Office documents and PDF files. Useless on pictures, music or video files.

Thanks, This looks promising. I know that it may slow things down a little but it's a reasonable option if you just need that little bit more storage. Need to weigh that up against using some other form of external storage though. SD Card, tiny USB key etc.