One of the most vital jobs of a computer’s operating system — its basic software — is storing and retrieving information on disks at the request of programs like word processors or spreadsheets.

Does your main squeeze need an upgrade? Don’t be shocked. You probably haven’t paid much attention to compression software over the years. In fact, you may not even own compression software.

Although the differences are sometimes made opaque in casual conversation, there is in fact a complete difference between archiving files and compressing them. Archiving means that you take 10 files ...