Problem with audio and video files playback after ntfs folder decompre

I am using win 10 64bit with which i used to have no problems playing back music and video. Recently, i discovered that the entire two folders where i am keeping my music and videos and which are both on one partition alone have been ntfs compressed as i noticed that the partition property attribue "allow compress files to save disc space" was checked (may be I accidentally checked this attribute). Dealing with the compressed files was very annoyingly slow so after a quick search i decompressed the files and folders by un-checking the folders attribute, a process that has taken 3 days because of the huge size of data. Playing the de ompressed media files turned to be frustrating with lots of stuttering, catching. Is there a fix i can do to restore smooth playback?

To be honest, ntfs compression (or decompression) should not of itself cause the stuttering you experience. I suspect that your problem is more likely due to fragmentation.

As an experiment I have just copied 6GB of video files to an ntfs-formatted 8GB USB. As you'd expect, initially Defrag said 0% fragmentation. Then I applied ntfs compression to the whole drive, resulting in it being 24% fragmented. Uncompressing the files again made little difference, still 24% fragmented. The initial compression would have fragmented your files and probably goes a long way to explaining the stuttering. Defragmentation may have been more help to you than decompression.

Another possible cause of the stuttering could be if you are short on RAM, the swap file would get a lot of use, maybe a bit more than usual with decompression being used on the fly. At 4GB I have no problems with videos, but any less and you may run into problems. You don't say how much RAM you have, but the less you have the more the swap file would be used. This would be a noticeable impediment if the swap file was on the same physical drive as the video files, particularly if they were in different partitions with consequent large head movements being needed.

Before you try anything else, I would copy all your video files to an external drive as a backup. Apart from anything else, the copies would not be fragmented so should play properly. Then I'd defragment the originals.

Thank you Caledon Ken and Bree for your elaborate approach to the problem I have presented, and let me first apologize for the delay in feedback. Actually before I noticed your replies to my post I did and experiment by decompressing a file and copying it to another hard drive in the same machine. I then played the video and it was smooth as it used to be. I consequently suspected a problem within the hard drive these files are being kept in. I decided to decompress and move all its contents. This was successful done but over an extraordinary time. All files then played normally in their new location. Then I decided to examine the suspected partitions ( H and M, constituting disk 3), so I started copying some media files to and from these partitions. I noticed the process is also extraordinary lengthy. In my opinion this is probably a hard disk problem of read/write and the disk is probably faulty somehow. I emptied the disk and formatted it and it is now inaccessible for a reason I don`t know. However, the good news I saved my files but unfortunately it may be the hard disk that may need to be changed. I may give it another chance to try recover it if you may advise some software that can help. By the way, my machine specs are Processor Inter Core 2 quad, 12 Mb cash, 8 GB ram, Windows 10 64 bit, internal Storage 2 TB. It remain unclear to me why the NTFS compression was performed as I don`t recall checking it.......absent minded?! may be. Thank you .

Hi Caledon Ken, Yes I totally agree using this hard drive is becoming an obvious risk, and I am considering replacement. In fact the hard disk appears in disk management but when I click it in "this PC" a "this drive is inaccessible" appears. I will follow your advice and run a check disk before finally deciding on it.

Thank you for your support.

mowaffak said:

...using this hard drive is becoming an obvious risk, and I am considering replacement...

I use Crystal Disk Info to check the health of my disks. It's available as a Portable App.
https://portableapps.com/apps/utilit...kinfo_portable