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MagicRAR Drive Press - worth anything?

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mwb1100:
I've just heard about a utility that claims to increase the efficiency of Windows's native NTFS compression.  I'm mildly interested in this because I have a fair bit of stuff that can be usefully compressed (such as C header files and libraries - they're write once, compressible, and take up a lot of space if you have many compilers/SDKs/toolkits).

  - http://www.magicrar.com/drive-press.html

I'm curious about this software because of some of the claims made on an older site by the vendor:

All software has bugs...even Windows!

MagicRAR Drive Press uses safe, proven NTFS compression to increase your disk capacity.

But it outperforms Windows significantly! How is this possible, since both use NTFS compression?

It's a bug in the Windows drive conversion routine, which misses files that are completely safe to compress. First introduced in the problematic Windows Vista version, this bug renders a significant portion of your hard disks incompressible - even on the newer Windows 7 and Windows 8 versions! Take a look at the evidence we have collected below and see for yourself how MagicRAR Drive Press exceeds Windows's own compression, while using time-tested, proven, and completely safe, reversible NTFS compression as its underlying storage medium. And because Drive Press is multi-core and SSD capable, it will also convert your drives in a fraction of the time it would take Windows to do so. More storage and faster processing - now that's a win-win proposition!
-http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EL3b2dEehRkJ:howtocompressfiles.org/drive-press.html+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
--- End quote ---

This kind of feels like either snake-oil or maybe a registry setting that can be set without any special software. But I'd like to know more.

Does anyone have any experience with this software?  

Any  better information on how it works or what the mentioned bug in the Windows drive compression routine is?

superboyac:
I have zero facts for what I'm about to say...

I'd only use something like this as a last resort or on a device I cared nothing about if it exploded or got stolen tomorrow morning.  For anything more important than that, I'd buy additional storage before doing anything like this.  I also avoid compression as much as practically possible.  But I am admittedly more than slightly paranoid about such things.

mwb1100:
I'd only use something like this as a last resort or on a device I cared nothing about if it exploded or got stolen tomorrow morning.  For anything more important than that, I'd buy additional storage before doing anything like this.  I also avoid compression as much as practically possible.  But I am admittedly more than slightly paranoid about such things.
-superboyac (December 09, 2012, 11:56 PM)
--- End quote ---

I've never been bitten by any problem with NTFS compression (though I understand that Home Server had a bug in it's backup system when interacting with some compressed files).  Something I read about the 'Drive Press' thing lead me to believe that the actual compression used was the native NTFS encryption (so even if the Drive Press software were removed, the files would be handled just fine by the NTFS driver).  However, I'll need to dig around to locate what made me think that - I still haven't actually tried the software, mainly because of paranoia a bit similar, if not quite as intense, to yours. 

However, I may still test it out sometime (maybe I'm not paranoid enough),and I'm curious if anyone else knows anything about the software (or the bug it 'fixes').

f0dder:
Haven't looked at it, but my snake-oil alarm bells are making a lot of noise - and trying to cash in on the RAR brand while having no technical relation to it definitely doesn't help (the text you pasted says NTFS compression).

mwb1100:
Just to be clear, the 'Drive Press' thing is part of a larger product, which is a full-blown shell integration archiver tool (ie., it makes archives look like folders in explorer).  It does apparently support RAR archives, but otherwise is not associated (as far as I know) with the outfit that makes WinRAR.  So your point about it cashing in on the RAR brand is well taken.

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