Defragging unmovable files

[evilneko]

It actually has been defragged before, but it's been months upon months. I think the last one was probably January though. Noticed Office 2k7 was taking longer to load. The defrag didn't help. :( That was before I installed 1.7, so at the very least the fallout exe is likely fragmented. Mods are likely to be highly scattered.

 

I also run JkDefrag with "move to beginning" or "move to end" (depending on where the boundary is being moved) settings whenever I do any mucking about with my partition set up. Obviously that very rarely happens.

 

I'm not testing just the program launching though. It has to load a save too. :thumbsup: Maybe I should even try timing how long it takes to make a screenshot too, hmm... probably too quick to time, but the delay is noticeable.

[LHammonds]

The longest load time with these games are the huge .esm and BSA files. If those have been defragged once, subsequent defrags will not be as noticable during times of loading assets such as loading the game, loading savegames and loading different cells (such as outside to inside).

 

I'd still be interested to see your timings though since you have applied a patch...which like you said is mainly just the EXE...although it is a very small file and can load quickly on fast systems.

 

LHammonds

[evilneko]

I installed Mass Effect 2 before defragging. :biggrin:

 

Unfortunately the defrag (and my sleep) was interrupted by a very annoying power outage. The hard drive survived fine, no worries. But, as I write this (on my lappie) the now-resumed defrag is still going (I didn't restart it immediately, just did about three hours ago). It at least finished the system partition before the power went out.

 

So ah, results still pending.

[TheTerminator2004]

If only the exe file is fragmented, you won't see much difference, if any, seeing as the exe is very small, and therefore won't be very fragmented. Similarly, you have no way to time how long it takes to load, seeing as 95% of the game's load time will be from initialising, and loading resources. For a proper test, you'd want to uninstall it, then install a couple of small programs (to go in the space FO3 used to be in), then reinstall FO3. But that doesn't seem worth the effort - better to wait until you next buy a new game.

[evilneko]

Results time!

 

Straight to the point: thus far I'd call it a null result. Average loading times for Fallout 3, a Fallout savegame, and even the should've-been-Massively-fragmented Mass Effect 2 (/rimshot) are pretty much the same.

 

Here's the before and after picture:

Fallout 3 game launch, timed from "Launch FOSE" to title card: 12 seconds before, 12 seconds after.

Fallout 3 save game load, timed from click to in-game: average 10 seconds before and after, but with quite a bit of variation before defragging, less afterward. Save files are stored on a separate partition

 

Mass Effect 2 launch, timed from click to the "Press any key" screen. Unskippable intro videos are included in the time: Average 27 seconds both before and after defrag. This is interesting, because if anything should've changed, it was this. I installed ME2 just yesterday onto the still-fragmented drive.

 

I don't really notice any difference in general system responsiveness, either, but I don't have any hard numbers on say, how long it takes SeaMonkey or Opera to open either.

 

Defragging took less than two hours for the 50GB system partition (~15GB free), and around 5 for the ~450GB (~80 free) second partition. Desktop system specs are in my profile. The single hard drive uses a SATA II interface.

 

What was that you said about fragmentation being less noticeable on fast machines? Ah well, in the next couple of years I think SSDs will become mainstream, and we'll look back at this whole concept of defragging and laugh. :tongue:

 

Edit: I'm considering using JkFragmenter or Raxco Scramble to re-frag the drive and try the PerfectDisk free trial. Hmmm. Maybe later though, been having lots of power glitches, and my desktop's UPS is pretty much useless. Just doesn't have the ooomph the desktop needs.