Defrag O&O Complete Name

[pilot37]

Following the good idea from rivimey below I downloaded a trial version of O&O Defrag. The defrag took a full 24 hours to run, I then re-ran it for another 4 hours. I cannot quantify but my load times for even Woodhead have at least halved (and I use a lot of assets) and the big loading stutters have reduced very significantly. Trial is 30 days. I will keep testing before buying the full licence and feed back.

For me, the best fix for this (while using a spinning disk) is to arrange the folders on my disk to be next to each other: that is (physically on disk) all the files in a folder are next to each other, and all the folders are too. I do this using the O&O Defrag tool in "Complete/Name" mode, which works wonders in many ways. You can run it free trial for 30 days without problem.

The reason this works is that RW uses lots of files, and they all need to be loaded very quickly when a new tile is reached. Reducing the need for the head to seek, and making the most of the disk drive track buffer and the cache, is the way to do it, and you do that by putting all the files you're going to need in the same part of the disk.

Note. the standard Windows defrag, and tools like jkdefrag in "simple" mode, do defrag the files but don't rearrange them, so you don't get this benefit.

HTH
Ruth

[andymar54]

Hi,

This is interesting and has been offered before on other defrag progs. Though I have found there not to be a lot of difference when loading trials of Flight Sim progs in the past, I was using a different PC then so perhaps it's time for another try.

Railworks seems a bit difficult to get objective timings from however.
I started a scenario in Oxford-Paddington I use for testing and it took 1 min 3 seconds to load (internet offline)
I then closed the prog, went on line, and tried to load the scenario again. It only took 36 seconds.
I assume Railworks has some sort of cache it loads from ,which would of course make 'Resume' much faster but i dont know.

It will be interesting to hear further from you on your findings. What we probaby need is to have a default scenario we can all use as a reference to assess how our systems compare.

Andym.

[smarty2]

Makes no difference to ssd's though does it?

[RichyV]

It came 3rd in this review:

http://disk-defragmenter-software-revie ... eview.html

But as I've always used Diskeeper, I have no reason to change...

[pilot37]

I ran Railworks off an ssd for a while...didnt seem to help. Now I have windows on the ssd and Railworks on a 1TB hard drive. This defrag has made the biggest improvement for me. Need more time to be sure.
Woodhead with losts of assets for my home made scenarios was taking over 5 minutes to load which meant I never used it. I will experiment more but all this is not very scientific because Railworks keep updating things. Probably need six sigma or Taguchi on this

[ttjph]

Any updates on this approach of defragging to arrange complete folders together?

What other defrag programs can do this?

[andynwt]

Didn't microsoft buy the diskkeeper tech? You get a stripped down version of it, it's probably good enough for most people...

[BobLatimer]

I have tried a free defragger called MyDefrag v4.3.1 which, as I understand it, does a similar thing to O&O and will sort all files on the HD by full path name, thus putting all of each folder's in the same area of the HD. It has several alternative "runs" - monthly system disk, monthly data disk, weekly system disk, weekly data disk etc.. The monthly ones are the most rigorous and did take a long time the first time I ran them.

I haven't done any comparison of loading times before and after.

Bob.

[ihavenonamenoreallyidont]

Makes no difference to ssd's though does it?

Defragging SSDs is highly cautioned against. Lots of info out there on why.

[JLD95]

no interest for SSDs because access times are negligible

[ttjph]

OK, I went for it, using MyDefrag on the included System Disk Monthly script. It ran within three hours on a 140 GB disk with 84 GB free, which had recently been defragged using another tool with 'optimised' placement but no sorting.

Both before and after, I did a cold boot, launched TS2013, cleared cache, reloaded it, and loaded the first Class 390 scenario on WCML-N (since that's probably my slowest-loading route).

Before: 58 sec boot-up, 24 sec to load TS2013 the second time, 2m36s to load '01 - Preparations'.
After: 52 sec boot-up, 24 sec to load TS2013 the second time, 1m34s to load '01 - Preparations'.

I'll have to play rather more before I comment on tile loading; but for me I think that load time improvement is worth it anyway!

MyDefrag is freeware, but I might consider making a donation to the author soon.

Thanks to rivimey and pilot37 for the suggestion, and to BobLatimer for suggesting MyDefrag!

[peterfhayes]

The best guide I've ever seen for defragmenting (using O & O) was by Nick Needham over on simforums. Although designed for FSX it will also apply to TS2013 as they have similar file structures. The guide is here: http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic34 ... tml#198187

NOTE: Nick recommends at least 3 passes with O&O om a new install

Open O&O defrag, click the OS drive in the list

Right click and select SPACE

DO NOT TOUCH THE COMPUTER FOR ANY REASON WHILE ANY O&O DEFRAG IS RUNNING.. NO EMAIL, NO SURFING, NO FILE MOVES, NOTHING! IF YOU DO IT WILL NOT OPTIMIZE CORRECTLY

Once that is complete, close O&O, reboot and then start O&O defrag and select the FSX Drive, right click and select SPACE

Once complete, open the O&O SETTINGS - OFFLINE DEFRAGMENTATION TAB

Select EXECUTE ONCE ON NEXT SYSTEM STARTUP, then

Select your OS drive, click ENABLE

Select you FSX drive, click ENABLE

Click APPLY and OK to close the box and reboot the computer

The Offline defrag will run on reboot, once complete it will return to Windows

Once back in Windows Open O&O defrag, select your OS drive, right click and select COMPLETE\NAME

DO NOT TOUCH THE COMPUTER FOR ANY REASON WHILE ANY O&O DEFRAG IS RUNNING.. NO EMAIL, NO SURFING, NO FILE MOVES, NOTHING! IF YOU DO IT WILL NOT OPTIMIZE CORRECTLY

Once complete, reboot and Start O&O defrag, select the OS DRIVE AGAIN drive, right click select COMPLETE\NAME, reboot when complete

FSX DRIVE

Start O&O defrag, select the FSX drive, right click select COMPLETE\NAME

Once complete, reboot and Start O&O defrag, select the FSX DRIVE AGAIN drive, right click select COMPLETE\NAME

When all drives are done, go into the SETTINGS for O&O DEFRAG and ENABLE THE OFFLINE DEFRAG ON ALL DRIVES FOR ONE TIME, REBOOT AND RUN THEM



This operation may take several hours to finish and please DO remember this, with any defrag solution a system is NOT DEFRAGMENTED completely in ONE PASS REGARDLESS OF WHAT THE GUI SHOWS, it REQUIRES 3 passes to do it right ON A NEW INSTALL!




Summary:

Normally, on a new install with all new software and everything installed

DISK CHECK ON ALL DRIVES

SPACE defrag on each drive with a reboot between

OFFLINE defrag on ALL drives

COMPLETE\NAME on each drive with a reboot between

and then REPEAT IT: COMPLETE\NAME on each drive with a reboot between

and last, OFFLINE defrag on ALL drives

For an SSD Perfect Disk is excellent having a program app dedicated to SSDs and it works on any SSD irrespective of whether they support TRIM or not.
pH

[smarty2]

Mydefrag has a special routine designed for ssd's too, haven't run it often though for obvious reasons.