Hangs linkied to fragmentation, fragmentation linked to X3

[brekehan]

It seems whenever my game starts freezing up that my harddisk is 25% or more fragmented. On a whim I defragged and started playing again. I played fine all night with no problems. Then in the morning it started freezing again. So I looked at my harddrive and sure enough it was 25% fragmented. So I defragged again. Then a third time the cycle repeated. All the while I have not installed anything! So I have to assume X3 is fragging my hard drive? Perhaps from excessive paging?

Anyone else notice this trend or have input?

[CBJ]

The game cannot fragment your drive. Only Windows can do that, since it controls the filing system that decides how files are distributed. During play, the only writing to the HDD that occurs is the virtual memory, the savegames, any screenshots you take, and some of your option settings being written to the registry. If Windows fragments the drive as a result of writing the savegame or virtual memory then there is nothing the game can do about it.

[Da_Junka]

Use smoker or Xp-antispy to clear page file on shutdown, it's helped my X3 performance no end.

[ouch]

actually I think (ok, theory ) the game does have (non-direct) control over this. I believe each time a command is called to write a file, windows looks for a spot to put it. if this command is called multiple times I think it could un-intentionally fragment the hardrive.

I can totally see egosoft saveing files this way due to thier potential size.

in most cases the file is created in memory and then saved with one save command. but this process could take up quite a bit of memory with X3. instead I think they may have broken the saveing process into X number of byte sizes and then patched the file together on the drive.

I use to program data base software and I came across a somewhat simular problem. in huge databases the program would seemingly stop saveing after a certain point. what was happening was that the file was too big to fit in the ram and then windows would use a page file, thus slowing the process down greatly. to fix this I broke the database file up and saved pieces of it at a time.

in X3's case the game itself is probably sucking up most if not all the ram and then trying to do a large, complex, file save job probably made the programmer patch smaller files together like I did.

and this "may" cause the fragmentation issues some people are expressing.

[brekehan]

while windows handles virtual memory I am sure any application can indirectly cuase fragmentation. Simply by having excessive paging, excessive file writing, deleting, etc., so in fact X3 could cause this by poor use of memory, bad algorithms involving writes and delletes, etc. Just as the user can cause fragmentation by huge installations and deletions, no one would say it's Window's fault in that case, it would be the user's fault as it could also be with an application. I am not saying X3 for sure does this, but I am speculating on observations. I am seeking verification of my speculation by asking if others too have noticed increased fragmentation of thier hard disk.

[EventHorizon]

X3 does indeed seem to cause some fragmentation, as has been suggested when it works on saving files.

However, this only causes a small amount each time (and may never cause any depending on location on hard disk etc etc). The big issue is the installer, ok not X3's fault but you need to defrag after installing ANY program!

I have also noticed several interesting things with regards to some of X3's non save game files...specificaly the .DAT and .CAT files. On my system they are always getting fragmented, not by a lot but enough to somtimes to pop into my "most fragmented files" list.

Bottom line, defrag at least once a week. It's a good idea anyway...

[chrisallen76]

ok i fragged my drive then played about 3 hours of X3, the game froze again.

looked at my what percent my drive was fragged and it was less than 0.2% so i dont think my freezes are linked to disk fragmentation!!

also it's not CPU overload as my CPU usage was running at 52%

dont really know what else to try now

pity the game froze at a really crucial moment, i had just put the finishing touches to a self sufficient silicon complex and was about to load it with energy, when it froze!!!

you know you'd think you would remember to save the game at some point during all of that!!!

DOH!

[MonsterZero]

I defragged everything and then played.. and yep.. pretty obvious here, the new saved game files all jump to the top of the list for fragmented files.

Should be an easy fix... (don't see any other games with this issue)

[brekehan]

after defragging the 8th time and playing another 8 hour session until a freeze occured, symantec speed disk reported savegame 17 has 116 fragments, hmm that can't be good
save 16 and 15 weren't far behind as the most fragged files ever in 8 hours.

[SteveMill]

while windows handles virtual memory I am sure any application can indirectly cuase fragmentation. Simply by having excessive paging, excessive file writing, deleting, etc., so in fact X3 could cause this by poor use of memory, bad algorithms involving writes and delletes, etc. Just as the user can cause fragmentation by huge installations and deletions, no one would say it's Window's fault in that case, it would be the user's fault as it could also be with an application. I am not saying X3 for sure does this, but I am speculating on observations. I am seeking verification of my speculation by asking if others too have noticed increased fragmentation of thier hard disk.

Absolutely. Seen the same thing.

[madtommy]

just out of interest, have you tried defragging, rebooting and then defragging again without launching x3 at any point... just i've seen defrags sit there shifting bits of files all over the place but afterwards the drive reports pretty much the same level of fragmentation...

i had massive problems with defragmentation playing bf2 and it made no difference how many times i ran defrag... i ended up using diskeeper and i've had virtually no fragmentation since then