I posted this in the Gothic 3 thread on SA, but I figured I should crosspost it here as it's good information I think.
Especially for mass multi games and stuff that is patched often. When those huge files get patched the stuff moves all over the hard drive.
This really helped my eq2 zoning times when I played, as they'd update the big zone files with nearly every patch.
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Here's a cool utility that comes in handy for pretty much any game.
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Contig.htmlContig. This is a single file defragmenter, but you can tell it to specifically defragment an entire directory, including all subdirectories, with a couple of switches.
Place the contig.exe file somewhere in your path statement. Easiest place is \windows\system32\ - do this so you can run contig from any directory and it'll be found.
C:\Games\Gothic III>contig
Contig v1.41 - Makes files contiguous
Copyright (C) 1998-2001 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - [url]www.sysinternals.com[/url]
Contig is a utility that relies on NT's built-in defragging support
to make a specified file contiguous on disk. Use it to optimize execution
of your frequently used files.
Usage:
contig [-v] [-a] [-s] [-q] [existing file]
or contig [-v] -n [new file] [new file length]
-v: Verbose
-a: Analyze fragmentation
-q: Quite mode
-s: Recurse subdirectories
C:\Games\Gothic III>
With these options what you'd do is change directory to where you installed gothic iii then run "contig *.* -s" without the quotes. This will hit every file and include the subdirectories.
I've already done this for my gothic iii directory, so I'm going to run contig *.* -a to analyse.
Summary:
Number of files processed : 51
Average fragmentation : 1 frags/file
Now I'll check out another directory that isn't so clean.
C:\Games\rFactor>contig *.* -a
Contig v1.41 - Makes files contiguous
Copyright (C) 1998-2001 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - [url]www.sysinternals.com[/url]
binkw32.dll is in 4 fragments
dsetup.dll is in 3 fragments
libmysql.dll is in 5 fragments
mss32.dll is in 5 fragments
ReadMe.chm is in 4 fragments
rF Config.exe is in 5 fragments
rFactor Dedicated.exe is in 5 fragments
rFactor.exe is in 7 fragments
rFm is in 3 fragments
UIData is in 2 fragments
V8Factor_Uninstall.exe is in 2 fragments
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Summary:
Number of files processed : 33
Average fragmentation : 2.0303 frags/file
C:\Games\rFactor>
I should have ran "contig *.* -a -s to analyse the subdirectories as well, but it is early and I forgot that step.
Now I'll run "contig *.* -s" in the rFactor directory. (great racing game, btw)
Summary:
Number of files processed : 7161
Number of files defragmented: 535
Average fragmentation before: 1.35191 frags/file
Average fragmentation after : 1 frags/file
As you can see this is a pretty useful tool. I normally use it after a game is patched or every couple of days on whatever I'm playing. If you really want to test if it works or not, go to the windows defragmenter and analyse and view the report. It'll list the most fragmented files on your system. Sort that list by the most fragments and use contig to defrag specifically that file. Analyse again with windows defrag and see if that file shows up in the list.
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