And this is why we should be defragging our drives with a good defragger!

[City Builder]

I've always used windows xp's built in defragger as I've always felt it was more of a scam to have to go and buy a 3rd party defragging tool that which windows already is giving us for free.

But if you look at the image below, you may notice all those orange blocks.  Can you guess what these are?  No, they are NOT my entire plugins folder being moved while being defragged, they are just ONE dat file that datpacker made for me last time that I dat packed my plugins.  The plugin in question is my BSC.dat file.  As you can see it is all over the hard drive in both areas that are faster to access (beginning of the drive) as well as in the middle and end (slower access).



So, imagine that when the game needs to access just that one file, it's got a huge amount of seeks that it has to do to get the entire file.  Feel free to count the orange blocks if your so inclined and you can see how many seeks the hard drive will need to make to be able to load up the file.  And some folks have wondered why it takes so long to load up their games, well while fragmentation isn't the only culprit, it "could" be a big part of it.

I started up SC4 with all my plugins datpacked, the result was that the game took aproximately 1 minute and 20 seconds to load up the game, this is using the -nointro switch to bypass the opening movies.  Then loading up a large city tile but one that doesn't have a large city yet established there (the city is about 10k population) took aproximately 1 minute and 30 seconds.

Then I used Ultimate degragger to degrag all my hard drives, and tried again.  While my numbers are done by counting (one, one thousand, 2 one thousand, 3 one thousand etc) since I don't have a stop watch or clock with a second hand, the time to load up the game, and load up the same city tile were reduced down to about 1 minute to load up the game and another 1 minute to load up the same large city tile, that shaved off about 50 seconds in load time which while 50 seconds is not any great length of time, when you are wanting to play a game or something such as that, 50 seconds can seem like eternity for some folks.

Now let me end by saying that I have used windows built in degrag programmer but it has never made a lick of difference in load times for my SC4 game.  I do believe that it does a basic defrag job on the hard drives but it doesn't have the capabilities to put certain files at the beginning of the drive where the access to them is the fastest like I've done with the game and all it's associated files.

So...

Just something to think about if you enjoy this kind of techno info, or if perhaps your game has gotten terribly slow to load up and even worse to load up a large city tile.



P.S. I'll go out and get a cheapy stop watch sometime in the next two weeks, this should give my computer plenty of time to frag up the files and folders again for the game, and I won't do any defragging until then, and I'll do it a bit more precise for the folks that like real world numbers so that they know specifically whether it took  98 seconds to load the game or if it only took 92.5 seconds.  So stay tuned for the next test in about 2 weeks if interested. 

Feel free to discuss.

[DFire870]

Well, it's been known that Windows' built in defragger is lousy, and it's recommended to get a 3rd party one if you really want to make a difference in loading times for your computer. There are some 3rd party programs that you don't have to pay for, but there aren't too many.

-- John

[City Builder]

The thing to rember however is that there are some lousy 3rd party defraggers as well.  I wont mention names but I did try one of them out that was highly recommended by not only reviewing type websites but by the people that used it through their own reviews.  The long and short of it was that on the first pass, this particular defragger told me that there was 56% file fragmentation.  So I let the program defrag the drive.  I then ran another 3rd party defragger who went on to tell me that there was about 18% fragmentation, so I let it run it's defragger, then I loaded up the original defragger and let it analyze the drive which then told me that the drive had 13% fragmentation.  So....  When I contacted the author of the first defragger program above, he completely ignored my questions about how accurate his program was when other programs were still detecting fragmentation after his program had been run and instead just said to wait until the next patch comes out.

Anyway, yes Windows defrag is only a basic defragger and better than nothing.  And ones like I wrote about in the OP in this thread that are feature rich and actually work can really help people.  This particular program goes down to the level where I can choose individual files to have placed at the outter edge of the platters so as to make them fast to retrieve where most other defraggers don't have this ability, in my case, I put some of my most used games at the beginning of the drives, and my zip archives at the inside of the platters since I rarely use them and then just let the defragger mentioned in the OP to maintain them that way automatically for me.

[FrankU]

DFire870,

could you give some names of defraggers that work good, as far as you know of?
I'd like to have one.

Thanks in advance.

[Glenni]

Meh, i don't mind waiting... i'm patient when sc4 starts up.. i just go and do something else, fire up the ps3, or watch TV or something... After batting for a while you learn what patience is...

[City Builder]

Pffffft.  That's not patience.  Patience is waiting for the defrag to finish after you've not defragged your drive for 1.5 years when you really just want to play a game instead. 

[RebaLynnTS]

Best times to defrag ...

Just before going to bed

As you leave to see the doctor

Just as you leave to go to work

That way you are not waiting for it, it is done when you get back.

[DFire870]

DFire870,

could you give some names of defraggers that work good, as far as you know of?
I'd like to have one.

Thanks in advance.

I can't think of any good ones right now, except for the one I have installed, which is the Auslogics Disk Defrag. I've been using it for awhile and it works good.

But if you want to shell out the money for a defragger that also has other nifty things like a registry cleaner, I recommend the iolo System Mechanic. My dad uses it and it's really good.

-- John

[jeronij]

Defragmenting is a good practice indeed and I encourage every member to defrag their HD's from time to time  . Thanks for recalling us about that useful tool CB 

But after reading your explanation about the loading times test you did, I wanted to ask you if you rebooted your computer after loading your game the first time, and before defragmenting your disk with the new tool. Usually, after a fresh computer start, the first time you load the game and a city it will take more than twice the time that the following times you start the game/open a city during the same computer's session. I just wanted to call your attention about that, because it could be altering your test results 

[catty]

I use Paragon Total Defrag as its free for personal use, and it seems to do a reasonable good job at de-fragging my computer 

[TopCliff]

I should probably defrag my drive on my comp with SC4. And trust me, I don't BAT, but I know the meaning of patience when it comes to game loading times. With my game, loading one tile usually takes 2-4 hours. I will go and defrag my system, as soon as I'm done compressing files, which usually shaves off a good 10-15 minutes in the loading time.

[TheTeaCat]

Very interesting thread

I've used Magical Defrag by Ashampoo and it does a fantastic job.

one of its handy features is that it will activate and start to defrag if the pc has been idle for 15mins
and stops instantly as soon as you use the pc. I have used this product on 3 different machines
over a period of 3 yrs now and would definitely recommend it to anybody for ease of set up and use.

I dl'd the trail version of the one you use to see how it was.

on my initial scan of my c drive it told me I had a fragmentation % of 0.195 (This been my normal program in normal use).
I was impressed as this seems to be the only software that will give an actual figure. I then ran Ultimate defrag on
the same drive overnight (it originally had an estimated time to complete an auto tune up of 37 hrs  eeek) and
completed it in less than 5 (short sleep) and I ended up with a fragmentation % of 0.183

Not a massive improvement (even though I didn't really have a fragmented drive in the first place )
but still better

The other feature you pointed out of being able to defrag specific files/folders is not something I have seen with
any other program and could be very useful especially with all the mega packs out there and from using DATpacker.

I shall continue to use its trial period to see if it is better than my current one but I do like its extra features

I have noticed though a decrease in the time things take to start since I reorganised the drive so thanks for that alone.


TTC

[City Builder]

Your welcome.

When used properly and allowed to take it's time it does actually do wonders.  For me my Windows even starts up faster because on my computer, C holds windows and D holds all my games, so I optimized the C drive to put all of the windows junk at the outter edge of the drive so seeks times are lessened to find the data it needs and windows loads up all my garbage faster.

The only thing I should have mentioned is when you use Ultimate defrag, make sure that you let it use 100% CPU power, its right in the options out in the open, because if you don't you might find it actually will run for 37 hours or more.

As you can see though, your Magical defrag is doing a good job.  It's why I suggest to people to have two defrag programs and run one right after the other to see if their numbers coincide close enough, if there is a big discrepency then one might be able to rightly assume that the defragger that ran first is possibly fudging numbers for some reason or just not doing a proper job  but when two or three defraggers all agree on the amount of fragmentation then you know your in the sweet spot.