This will be a matter of trial and error, as I've heard that disk
compression affects some games, although I've never noticed on
the ones I have this way.
<snip>
If you only have the one drive, then I wouldn't compress the
whole thing. Operating systems generally don't fare too well
when squished. As a general rule, leave twice the amount of
space required for the OS, + 10% of the total drive for disk cache
and swap files.
You have 3.8Gb, and Win95, then 200 or so for Win95 + 400Mb
uncompressed on top, for a total of 600Mb uncompressed area.
A problem you might find with disk compression later, is that
when you want to increase the amount of uncompressed area (for
a program that might demand it), and your compressed files
exceed the amount of uncompressed free space, then you'll have
no choice but to buy another drive just so you can off-load some
items. Sounds complicated, but basically you can't change the
amount of disk compression while files are residing in the
compressed area.
The last thing to point out about compressing drives is that you
don't magically take a drive and split it in half. There's a little file
added to the uncompressed area that is simply a roadmap for the
OS to find things in the compressed area. Depending on how
much drive you compress, this file could get quite large.
Again, trial and error.
Yes, they're much better these days, but not infallable. Try
compressing only a 1/3 of the total area, and run some games.
You may like, or not like. I'm not sure if it'll make a real impact
on the ones you mentioned - it doesn't seem to hurt mine.
Cheers!
Marc