In Win7 "Windows Explorer" if you right click on a Drive and select "Properties," you generally will see a box that says "Compress this drive to save disk space" and a second box that says "allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to the properties."

If the Search did anything useful, you might want the file contents to be indexed, but as noted the Search in Win Explorer has NEVER produced a valid result for me. Compression is sort of a matter of choice, but I prefer just to have enough drive space that I don't need it. (Recovery of compressed files from a drive that gets corrupted but still spins is somewhat less likely than for uncompressed files.) Since I've never seen a valid result from the Search in Win Explorer, I can't see any difference between what it "finds" with indexing on or with it off. YMMV.

If you select Properties for a FOLDER a similar pair of boxes usually will indicate that you can choose whether the files should be "Hidden" and/or "Read Only." For my purposes, I have no reason to make files Hidden so that box is unchecked. If you have a "Group Network" (LAN) and/or more than one user for the machine, the "Read Only" box generally will reset the check mark automatically if you remove it.

Some programs will occasionally tell you a "File cannot be processed because it is Locked" in which case unchecking the read only box and clicking "Apply" usually will turn it loose long enough to use it ONCE, but it will revert to read only almost immediately regardless of what you do. I have found "advice" on how to turn this automatic Read Only reset off permanently, but the change requires questionable Registry edits and is offered only from "Social Network" SPGWKs whom I can't identify.

(The "File is locked" error seems to appear most often when you're running a "batch process" on a folder full of files, but can pop up when you just open a file and try to edit it.)

John