Install fragmentation

[@Lantis]

Hi all!


I just did a full reinstall, because i wanted a clean start with TM176 and RSRDC 221 (which I understand is compatible with TM176:hmm: ).

I uninstalled SH4 and the savegames (there went 100 + hours of my precious gaming time ). I then let WinXP do an analysis of the harddrive (option before defragmentation). It wasn't fragmented at all, a nice thick blue bar where my SH3 and Wings over Vietnam reside (I have a separate partition for all my sim games). I chose not to defrag before the new installation.

Anyway, after the install from the DVD, I rebooted the PC, and did a new analysis.

The harddrive was completely fragmented!!! the installer had writen the SH4 files all over my 'SIM' drive!! I then applied patch 1.4 and the mods I use through JSGME, and did a defrag after that (took only 10 minutes). Now the analysis result seems a lot cleaner.


So, quick tip: check your drive for fragmention after installing SH4 plus any mods you install, then do a defrag, this will improve a lot of things IMHO, particularly load times.


Greetz,

@Lantis

[Mush Martin]

Normally after I load the game I will boot it up two or three times
then defrag so that the defragmenter gets the right priority on my
game files.
M

[capt_frank]

I never thought about defragging AFTER a clean install. Just checked and I needed one too, just re-installed two days ago completely fresh.

Good stuff, thanks!

[swdw]

You should see how badly things are fragmented after an initial install of windows and nothing else on a clean HD. Things get worse with every program you install.

I actually defrag windows after I've installed it and updated it before installing any software.

This is not just an SH4 problem, and whether it's due to the software or the OS will have to be answered by someone else.

[-Pv-]

Fragmentation on realtively new systems with 7200+rpm drives with lots of space is largely over-rated in the harm or slowness. Your game files fragmentation was probably due to not having a large amount of continuous space even though your EXISTING files before the install were unfragmented (the files which pre-existed were continuous, but located in clumps spread around the drive space.)
It's absolutely impossible to keep the dive TOTALLY unfragmented unless you are willing to wack years off your drive's service life. Having a fixed size swap file does a lot toward preventing fragmentation. File access slow downs which are measureable are when the head has to move large distances between fragmented sectors. It's possible for file portions to be fragmented, but the additional head movement to assemble the fragments might be very small, so no real gain from defragging. Even though the Windows defragger is not very efficient and leaves some things to be desired (like compressing files which belong to the same application together) I've found one thing it gets right is WHEN you should do it (generally speaking.) Done too often the gain is not worth the time and wear.
-Pv-