Dafydd on 26/3/2009 at 21:46

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Preface: I play Thief FMs now and again; but every time I do, I end up with a madly fragmented drive, and it takes forever for Norton Speed Disk (a.k.a., Snail Disk) to defragment the huge drive.

So I was wondering... I don't really know anything about this, so I may be asking an impossibility. But could I possibly create a virtual disk before each playing session, a VDisk that contained whatever I needed to play the particular fan mission I'm in at the moment -- and play from the VDisk?

I think all I would need to do at the end is copy the savegames back to the real disk. Could I then just delete the VDisk and not have to worry about defragmenting the physical disk (or at least not so much)?

Or are there technical reasons why this wouldn't work?

If it would, can anyone point me to some site that would tell me how to do this -- written for a layman, not a tech genius?

Thanks,

Dafydd

baeuchlein on 27/3/2009 at 16:58

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I don't think that Dafydd wants to turn his CD into a virtual drive, but instead wants the files which are usually located on the hard disk to be moved to a virtual disk. He said that somehow his hard disk (or rather, the data on it) is very fragmented after playing Thief or any fan mission.

I think it should be possible to do that. However, Dafydd, before you do anything like that, visit the Why it's probably not a good idea section below... you may save yourself a lot of unnecessary work.


How it could be done

At first, one needs a virtual disk that is large enough to host all files that are necessary to play the game. Then, Thief has to be installed, and after that, Darkloader. I don't use Garrettloader, so I can't tell you much about it.

The fan missions can stay on the hard disk, since Darkloader can read the missions from one location, yet creates the allsaves folder (where the saved games from these missions are stored) in the Thief folder. Thus, the allsaves folder will automatically be on the virtual disk as well.

I have done something similar already, although I did not use a virtual disk, but a network drive. But it did work, so there should not be any problem until now.

When Darkloader and Thief are installed (and properly configured) on the virtual disk, its contents have to be copied to a location on the hard disk. Now, a defragmentation of the hard disk should be done.

After all this, one has to copy the contents from the hard disk to the virtual drive before playing anything, and to copy the changed contents back afterwards. In theory, this could be done with the XCOPY command and the /D switch, at least in Windows XP. Older Windows versions may not have a usable /D switch with the XCOPY command, and newer versions have never arrived in my vicinity, so I can't tell you anything about this.

Since copying files should not be a problem for any virtual disk, this second part of the operation should work as well. I have no virtual disk, though, and frankly I don't want to test all this with a network drive, so I cannot absolutely guarantee it will be possible.


Why it's probably not a good idea

But I don't think this will change much concerning the fragmentation problem anyway. After playing missions, the contents of the hard disk will still be changed (there are some new saved games, and they will be copied to the hard disk), and at least some fragmentation will occur as a result. And this remaining fragmentation cannot really be avoided.

So, if this fragmentation is a real problem (I usually don't defragment my drives, yet rarely notice any slowdown or whatever), then this could be done. If, however, defragmenting the drive is something you just heard about and believed it to be incredibly important - check whether it really is. Try working with the computer for a few weeks without defragmenting the disk, and see whether it really gets slower. And if it does not, just forget about this defragmentation thing. Once every few months is usually enough for many people.


What else could be done?

If, on the other hand, this fragmentation issue turns out to be a problem, then instead of creating a virtual drive, one could create a new partition on the hard disk and install Thief and Darkloader to this new partition (which will be a new drive as well). Fragmentation on the other partitions will be reduced to a minimum, and defragmenting the little partition where Thief is installed should not be needed. And no copying would be necessary.

And if that still creates too much fragmentation on the other partition(s), you could as well transfer the fan missions to the new partition (with Thief and Darkloader on it) as well, and then any fragmentation caused by Thief should be limited to this partition.

PeeperStorm on 28/3/2009 at 04:50

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Once a week? :wot: That's much more often than it ought to need. Just how full are your partitions? Not having any free space is a major cause of fragmentation.