Can't afford the price of a new hard drive, but you need the space? An alternative to an upgrade while almost doubling your hard drive capacity is data compression.

Data compression software compacts the software and data on your hard drive so it takes up less space. The extra space you gain from the compression can be used to store additional software or data. Usually, you can gain 50% more space using data compression. For example, if you had a 500MB drive before compression, you would have a 1GB drive after compression.

Data compression, however, does have one disadvantage. It does slow your PC's processing. Why? When your CPU requests data from a compressed hard drive, the data compression software must first decompress the data. Only after decompression can the data be sent to the CPU. Conversely, when data is to be written to the hard drive from RAM, it must first be compressed.

However, the speed of current PCs generally compensates for the additional processing time required for data compression. You will only notice the "sluggishness" of data compression on older PCs.

How do I get data compression? Some operating systems have data compression built right in. Windows 95 uses drivespace while DOS 6.1 and 6.2 use doublespace. You can also purchase data compression software at your local computer store. Just follow the instructions in the package for installation.