Many of my clinets have been complaining about how big Adobe Illustrator files have gotten since version 10. Well it turns out there is a good reason for it. Starting with Illustrator 10, Adobe has been including PDF compatability information in all saved files. When you go to save a file for the first time or when you are using the Save As dialoug, Illustrator presents you with a number of options. The wording and graphical presentation of the options is a bit diffarent between Illustrator 10 and CS(11), but the gist and result is the same.
After you name the file, you can choose some items like how much of the font gets turned into a subset and whether or not to use compression. There is also a neat little item that says 'Make File PDF Compatible,' and this item is on by default. Uncheck it and complete the save. Now look at your file size, it should be about one fifth of what it is with PDF compatability. True, you lose the ability to open Illustrator files directly in Acrobat, but you gain huge amounts of file space. And when you have 25,000 files, 30MB saved on each file adds up qucik.
BTW, the check box makes itself active each and every time you save a new file; the only way I know of to undo that is to edit your Illustrator preferences file. A fellow name P.A. George from the Adobe forums gets credit for the following (he is referring to the AI:CS Prefs file):
"In AICS search for the block that looks like:
/aiFileFormat {
/enableContentRecovery 0
/PDFCompatibility 1
/cmykPostScript 1
}
and change PDFCompatibility to 0. You may have to save an .ai file first and quit Illustrator for these lines to show up in the prefs file since they are not added to the file until a feature is used that needs them."Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20040212114659917