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Windows periodically turns on compression for folders in my user profile like the documents folder. I uncompress them and then in the future compression gets turned back on for them. It may coincide with the drive running low on disk space. Is there a way to disable this behavior?

The visual indicator of this happening is all of a sudden the two blue arrows overlay starts appearing on the icons of the files and folders.

g491
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  • The first thing I would try is to attempt to make additional space on the partition that contains the user profile directory. – Ramhound Dec 31 '18 at 06:33
  • This is indicative of your system running low on disk space, and Microsoft has [previously announced](https://superuser.com/questions/1001970/two-blue-arrows-at-top-right-of-icons/1381546#1381546) that Windows Updates will compress files/folders in your user profile directory to ensure that the patches are installed successfully. The bottom line is that in order to stop this behavior, you need to have several GB of free disk space on your hard drive. – Run5k Dec 31 '18 at 08:02
  • @Run5k Is there some way to tell it not to do this even if space is running low? I'd rather get a warning and deal with it manually than have it compress stuff and I have to uncompress it after I notice. Thanks – g491 Dec 31 '18 at 23:59
  • Unfortunately, there isn't an option to do that. From Microsoft's perspective, the safety and security of your Windows 10 operating system takes precedence, so they prioritize the OS patches without any options for user intervention. Just out of curiosity, how big is the OS partition on your hard drive? These days, it should be relatively easy to ensure that you have a healthy amount of free disk space. – Run5k Jan 01 '19 at 00:05
  • It's a 500GB partition but I have a lot of stuff on there – g491 Jan 01 '19 at 21:15
  • That really isn't too small. While I understand that it can be relatively easy to accumulate a lot of personal files and folders, you still shouldn't be "critically low" on free disk space with a 500 GB partition. Rather than devote a lot of time and effort towards finding a way to disable automatic compression, it might be prudent to focus your attention on alternate storage solutions: Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, or perhaps even an external USB drive. If your operating system has some serious issues because Windows Updates can't install, a *"lot of stuff"* could be endangered. – Run5k Jan 02 '19 at 13:57

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Things to try after uncompressing the files manually first:

Disabling compression altogether by running the following in a command prompt that has been run as administrator:

fsutil behavior set disablecompression 1

Or disabling in Group Policy Editor:

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> Filesystem -> NTFS -> Set "Do not allow compression on all NTFS volumes" to "Enabled"

g491
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