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Back in the 90s, my home computer was an Acorn Archimedes. It had on it a piece of software called ArcFS, which allowed you to create compressed archives, a bit like zip files.
Unlike zip files, they could be mounted as a disk, a bit like dmg files on a Mac.
Unlike dmg files, they were compressed and writable.
If we could do this in the 90s, why can't we do this now? Today I use a Mac, and while I can create compressed disk images, they are not writable. Conversely, writable disk images are not compressed.
What is today's equivalent of ArcFS, and why isn't it more common?
3Two words: Cheap disk. – Daniel R Hicks – 2012-07-13T11:41:36.567
One still has to wonder though, if we have enough CPU power to encrypt and decrypt on the fly, at least some compression shouldn't be an issue... – Daniel Beck – 2012-07-13T12:00:27.643
Arguably, compression on the fly could speed up disk access (at least with HDDs) - less actual disk activity for a file of the same size - assuming there's enough bandwidth available on the CPU/memory side of things. – Bob – 2012-07-13T12:30:42.530
@DanielBeck, this is true and, as you can see from the answers, compressed filing systems are alive and well. On both Apple and Windows, you can compress parts of the folder structure at will. Linux has a number of compressed filing systems along similar lines to ArcFS. – Julian Knight – 2012-07-13T12:33:38.503