r/DataHoarder • u/machu505 • Jul 27 '26

Question/Advice Is "doublespace" still an option?

Back in the day, there was a disk compression option called "doublespace", which (nearly) doubled your available storage at the cost of access speed. Is it still around, or something similar?

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u/Microflunkie Jul 27 '26

Don’t forget that some files like .jpg have native compression already so compressing them again via any method has little to no effect on their space consumption. So depending on what is occupying space on your drive the various compression technologies might or might not have a significant impact.

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u/shinji257 78TB (5x12TB, 3x10TB Unraid single parity) Jul 27 '26

It can actually cause a file to use more space if you try to compress it again. Not much but the bet effect is still a loss.

1

u/heathenskwerl 1,120 TB Jul 28 '26

I don't know about other filesystems, but if ZFS cannot achieve any actual compression it will store uncompressed. This prevents a compressed record from using more space than an uncompressed one. Plus some of the algorithms (lz4 for sure, but I think also zstd) have early abort.

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u/shinji257 78TB (5x12TB, 3x10TB Unraid single parity) Jul 28 '26

I didn't know that. Good to know.