Compact OS run Windows with compressed system files

Recently, a user searching through Windows documentation learned about Compact OS, a built-in Windows feature that allows you to run the operating system on compressed system files.

As Microsoft says, Compact OS essentially stores Windows system files in a compressed format instead of keeping them uncompressed on disk. This can significantly reduce the operating system's disk footprint, making the feature quite useful for devices with limited storage and memory. Microsoft designed Compact OS for exactly this scenario, and says it can be used on systems using UEFI as well as BIOS.

See more articles from iGuRu.gr when you search for news on Google.

iGuRu.gr preferred source

This is another useful tool built into Windows that helps save space, similar to Disk Cleanup but aimed more at IT users and experienced users.

Microsoft also provides Compact.exe to check and change the Compact OS state of the system. For example, users can open a command prompt with administrator privileges and run Compact.exe /CompactOS:query to check the current state. Microsoft also provides the commands: Compact.exe /CompactOS:always to enable Compact OS, while the command Compact.exe /CompactOS:never can be used to return the system to its normal state.

Microsoft's size comparisons show how much space this can save. On a Windows 10 x64 installation with 4GB of memory, the company recorded a footprint of about 15,06GB without Compact OS, compared to about 11,3GB when Compact OS was used. With single-instancing enabled, the number dropped to about 10,09GB.

Of course, Compact OS isn't something that every Windows 11 user necessarily needs. Modern computers with large SSDs have plenty of storage space, and compressing system files also means that Windows will have to handle those files differently, which can further strain other resources.

Read Microsoft's official documentation for CompactOS on its Learn website (spotted by No-1internet on Reddit).

newsbot

Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.