FreeSpace [F/S] at a catalog price of $50, is a program for compressing files and data stored on virtually any non-network storage medium -- floppy disks, hard drives, magneto-optical disks, other high-capacity disks, and cartridges.

The F/S software for Windows 95 &NT/NTFS comes on a standard 3 1/2 floppy, with a 29 page Users Manual and an Installation Wizard that swiftly carried out the installation process in my Win 95 system. It takes up 2.5M of hard drive, requires 8M of RAM (16M for Win NT/NTFS ), and contains Help and Uninstall features. F/S has a wealth of features to analyze, compress, manage, and manipulate selected data and files. One can also get updates to the program from the Internet.

All data compression is aimed at reducing the size (without loss) of data packages that are shuffled around in one's computer. In general, there are two functions that data compression will enhance: storage and transmission.

Loads of software are available to achieve these enhancements, and such software comes as freeware, shareware, payware or on diskettes which may be borrowed for use legally. F/S, on the other hand, appears to have some unique features to recommend its use although all of these programs do somewhat the same thing.

As a start, it's interesting to note that, when installed, F/S injects a TSR file, FS32.EXE, which is 43.5K and invisible unless one has some means of discerning its presence. Disabling this file disables F/S which is designed to be operative whether used or not. Conceptually, FreeSpace is aimed at becoming part of the operating system ... always there, transparent to ordinary operations with files or data. F/S performs on-the-fly compression and decompression at extremely high speeds, so that, F/S'ed data always behaves the same as it does when it is uncompressed. With F/S there are no special partitions, no compressed drives, no special file names, and no extra steps to access F/S'ed data, as with the "zip" file format. It functions the same as the standard drive-compression software which operates on-the-fly for storing and retrieving files. The compression techniques used are additionally effective by also reclaiming cluster space. Individual files or whole drives may be selectively compressed and then, even when commingled with uncompressed data, used without special attention. Although all file types can be processed by this software, it does not compress boot data or all data in the Windows and FreeSpace folders.

The software's user interface is accessed from two, separately activated, core windows, F/S Manager and F/S Analyzer. F/S Manager is a window that contains four buttons for activating compress/decompress functions: Quick Space, Compress, Decompress, and Disk Checkup. Activating the Quick Space button analyzes the storage space on all drives, then goes through a series of windows: a) that allow a user to designate an amount of space to be freed, b) that present the amount of space on each drive, which can be freed up by compression, c) that show recommendations of folders to compress (on selected drives) for achieving the required storage space, d) that finally allow compression of the selected folders. But if the recommended selections are not suitable, F/S supplies another set, if available.

Activating the Compress button leads the user through set of windows that allow data compression on one's hard drive to be carried out systematically.  Analogously, the Decompress button carries out the operations for decompression. The nice thing about both of these functions is that F/S keeps making recommendations at every step for actions based on system analysis, but gives the user a final say on the action to be taken.

The Disk Checkup operation merely checks compressed files to verify that they are valid and in good condition. This operation can also repair F/S compressed files that have been damaged.

Considered next, is the second, major, functional capability of F/S, FreeSpace Analyzer. When activated, this function scans, analyzes and measures all file spaces stored in the computer drives and allows compression/decompression of any portion of these files. This function's display and operation are excellent. The display has a Win '95 Explorer-type look with five columns: 1) the left-hand column looks and works exactly like the folders column of the Win '95 Explorer window; 2) this column is a set of bar graphs alongside their corresponding folders in column 1); each graph portrays (in two colors) its folder's uncompressed size and estimated compressed size; 3) this column gives numerical values for the data shown in a corresponding bar graph, namely, uncompressed size, estimated compressed size, % compression; 4) & 5) these columns merely give a values for the sizes of folders and corresponding sub folders.

The QuickSpace function was tried by selecting a desired 10M saving in drive G of my computer. After running through all the files of drive G, the program selected the masters subfloor in the Lotus folder to meet the 10M requirement; compression was 59% for a saving of 10.3M. This was a simple operation. I then punched the button New Suggestion and the program suggested compressing the wordpro subfloor of Lotus for a 47% saving of 11.4M. Neat!

The same operation can be done using the FreeSpace Analyzer, except that the one must do the search oneself -- a small task. The analyzer is an excellent tool for looking at the whole panoply of computer's file compressibility. A quick scan of the display showed available compressions between the high 30%'s and the low 50%'s. I also tried compressing a 3 1/2 floppy that had only 512 Bytes of free space left. In 2 min F/S compression had produced a floppy with 114 KB of free space. In working with some of the compressed files, there was no noticeable problems.

FreeSpace appears to be a highly useful, versatile and easily managed software if one needs compression -- and likes to work with compressed files.