Since you appear to be on a Windows platform, you can just use the OS to do the compression. Use Windows Explorer to navigate to the directory, right click on the directory name, select "properties", select "general", select "advanced", check the box to compress the directory contents. That compresses all files in, or newly created in, the directory.
You can also compress a single existing file the same way.
Once a file or directory is compressed, you can look at the properties again to see how much space is actually used on the disk for the file.
Doc Muhlbaier
Duke
