Compress a Floppy
Not everyone has a thumb drive available when you need to copy more than a floppy’s worth of files, so why not compress the floppy and get more on it? It's easy, it works, it doesn't slow access and I used it daily for years with no problems.
So, how do you do it?
Assuming you are using Windows 9x:
Hit the 'Start' button, then Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Drivespace
Select "3 1/2 Floppy (A
"
Go up to: Advanced, Settings - click "Standard Compression" and "Automatically mount new compressed drives".
Hit "OK"
Go up to: Drive, Compress... Start, Compress Now
When it's done, look at: Drive, Properties
Your 1.44MB Floppy is now a 2+MB Floppy!
Compressing a floppy doesn't slow access because the data can be decompressed in much less time than it takes to read it from the disk.
If you are going to store things that are already compressed (.gif, .jpg, .zip) you won't gain anything from this, but word processor files, spreadsheet files and bitmaps can all be compressed - you'll be surprised.
It's better than using WinZip (or PKZip) because the compression is totally transparent.
What about Windows XP? Sorry, it doesn’t let you compress floppies directly, you have to create a new compressed folder containing your files, then copy it to the floppy:
Open My Computer.
Double-click a drive or folder.
On the File menu, point to New, and then click Compressed (zipped) Folder.
Type a name for the new folder, and then press ENTER.
Paste the files into the compressed folder and then click the compressed folder and select Send to: 3 1/2 Floppy (a
.
