Disabling NTFS Compression Win Server 2003

[gimp]

Is there any other way, short of the reg key, to disable NTFS compression on a Server 2003 box?

everything I can find says to use fsutil, but on 2003 fsutil does not contain the disablentfscompression command.

The only other way I've found, is by adding the reg key:
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\
and adding the DWORD NtfsDisableCompression with a value of 1.

This does not appear to be working, as it appears files are still getting compressed. At least, as far as I can tell they are since when I run the command "compact /U /S /A /I" on a specific folder, every time it says it has decompressed at least one file.

Also, everywhere I read about the fsutil command to disable NTFS compression, is generally speaking about Vista, although they do mention Server 2003. Maybe it's in 2003 R2?

I need to be able to disable this, as some of our sites are using roaming profiles, and our current data encryption product is Credant. If a server-side roaming profile contains an NTFS-compressed file, Credant pukes and prevents the profile from loading.

And no, we cannot move away from roaming profiles and towards folder redirection at this time.

 

[Snowknight26]

Run compact without any arguments then paste the output here. I find it strange that there is always at least one compressed file.

 

[gimp]

well maybe it's just something funky with Windows.

I run compact with no switches

Of 124 files within 1 directories
0 are compressed and 124 are not compressed.
11,540,154 total bytes of data are stored in 11,540,154 bytes.
The compression ratio is 1.0 to 1.

Then I immediately run a compact /U /S /A /I, I get the following:

1 files within 52443 directories were uncompressed.

it's like this on at least 3 servers. All Win2k3, not R2.


err... ok it looks like I have to run /s /a switches, otherwise it doesn't scan all the sub-folders.

 

[gimp]

so, it appears when I run the compact /U /S /A /I command enough times, it will finally come back and say 0 compressed files.

But on one server, I've ran it probably 5-6 times now since yesterday, and everytime it says it has decompressed some files.

I've already done the regedit on this particular server.

the other 3, after running it ~3-4 times, it would finally come back and say 0 files are compressed.

 

[HHunt]

Could it be that it can't always expand a file that's currently in use? That would explain the "some more files each time"-pattern.

 

[gimp]

Could it be that it can't always expand a file that's currently in use? That would explain the "some more files each time"-pattern.

you would think, but I'm only doing this on the folder hosting the roaming profiles.
I also get no error messages.

the chance of that many files being in use, over the course of at least a dozen times trying to decompress, is slim to none.

certainly possible, but not probable, I believe.

 

[gimp]

son of a... really?

Ok, so yesterday I ran compact /U /S /A /I /F
I found the /f switch will force a decompress on a file, regardless of whether it is compressed or not.

So, that took many hours to complete.
Checked again this morning...

Of 584349 files within 155525 directories
40 are compressed and 584309 are not compressed.
30,267,559,936 total bytes of data are stored in 30,263,134,010 bytes.
The compression ratio is 1.0 to 1.

what the fuck? seriously? how can I prevent these damn files from getting NTFS compressed?

as for the reg key; yeah, it doesn't work. Even though the numerous sites stated that reg key will disable NTFS compression in WIn2k3, it does not. I can manually compress and decompress a file that's located in one of these folders that are labeled

"New files added to this directory will not be compressed."

 

[Snowknight26]

What files are compressed? Maybe that'll give you a clue as to why they keep appearing.

 

[gimp]

What files are compressed? Maybe that'll give you a clue as to why they keep appearing.

not a clue, really.
I'm not exporting the output to a txt file, and it's kinda hard to watch the lines fly by, as it's scanning all those files and folders.

 

[gimp]

ok, so I ran it 2-3 times yesterday, using the /F switch. It takes a good almost 3 hours each time.

after the last time I ran it:

584528 files within 155580 directories were uncompressed.

then before I left for work, I run it with /s /a /i /f command, to get a listing of all files.
check the 50 mb log file I output to

Of 583756 files within 155264 directories
19 are compressed and 583737 are not compressed.
30,254,120,088 total bytes of data are stored in 30,253,959,851 bytes.
The compression ratio is 1.0 to 1.

only a single file errored, and I think it was one of the sub-folder for java cache.

the last log that only displays compression rate of files, I don't have time to look over 1 million+ lines to find the files that are still compressed.

Is there some other way of completely disabling NTFS compression?
The reg key obviously doesn't work.

The only other way I've been able to find, is to format the drive with a cluster size larger than 4096. Well, easier said than done, considering this holds all the user profiles for a 24/7 facility with over 300 employees.

Any other ways?

 

[gimp]

anybody?
any suggestions?

just had another user that couldn't log on due to issues downloading roaming profile having NTFS compressed files on the server.