While it is decreasing in importance due to the very rapid drop in the cost per
gigabyte of hard disk storage, there was a time when many PCs used one form or another of
disk compression, due to the relatively small disks and their high cost at the time. We're
only a few years removed from most PCs having only 40-100 MB hard disks. Compression
allows you to store more information in the same amount of disk space, by using special
software that reorganizes the way information is stored on the disk. (Hardware compression
does exist also but is not generally used for hard disk volumes.)
Next: Why Disk Compression Works
