Dat file defragging.

[Requimatic]

I've heard the only real way to defrag DDO's dat files is to just uninstall and reinstall the game. However a Google search led me to a thread many moons (years) old that spoke of a LotRO dat file defragger that folks used with DDO and had varying success.

Question is, do folks still use this, and does it still work? Or is there something else people are using now?

[Eth]

From another thread:

Will Akami support auto redownloading of files when corruption or even lack of is detected as some users speculated?

This is to say that if I delete one of my DAT files because I just choose to do so, will Akami auto re download the entire thing to enable me to get back in the game?
If not, then there is little saving grace for this change in the eyes of the beholders that wish to be vocal.


yes it will.

Guess you could try to rename them and see what happens. Use at your own risk.

[Requimatic]

From another thread:




Guess you could try to rename them and see what happens. Use at your own risk.

Eh, maybe. But the point of the dat defragging tool was to avoid having to re-download the large files. One such tool was apparently offered up by Turbine back in the day, for LotRO, which I actually managed to find a download link for. It did however require a .dll file replacement to work with DDO (which I was unable to acquire). People had varying results with it. Some expressed great performance increases (load times, character transitions, etc.) and others who were essentially on a fresh install said it wasn't a great deal for them.. which is understandable.

And of course there were those that said it did nothing but corrupt their installation, too.

I doubt my dat files are very fragmented, considering U21 is the only update I've installed since I returned to DDO, but the game's also running a little badly since the update, too. I had to tweak video settings and outright disable multi-pass lighting to keep my Monk from disappearing completely when using Shadow Veil, rather than just fade in to transparency a bit. Annoying.

So in all honesty it probably wouldn't benefit me that much. I'm just OCD about this type of thing.

[thouston]

may or may not be an option for you but,
a while back i repartitioned my ssd and reinstalled into the new partition.
made a big difference for me.
ymmv

[Flavilandile]

I've heard the only real way to defrag DDO's dat files is to just uninstall and reinstall the game. However a Google search led me to a thread many moons (years) old that spoke of a LotRO dat file defragger that folks used with DDO and had varying success.

Question is, do folks still use this, and does it still work? Or is there something else people are using now?

Uninstalling and reinstalling won't defragment your files anyway, since the download files will have to be patched and that's when the fragmentation now occurs.

But first lets talk about Fragmentation...

When talking of the DDO files there's two levels of fragmentation :
- The OS level
- The Internal content

The first one ( the OS level ) is the fragmentation created by the files being appended ( extended ) each time there is a patch/update. It leads to files being fragmented on your hard disk.

In the case of an SSD it doesn't matter, this kind of fragmentation doesn't occur on an SSD.
( said another way : the seek time is always the same number of clock cycle, even with an extremely fragmented file )

In the case of an HDD it can augment seek time ( the time it takes the reading head to find the right file and read it ). In that case you can use the defragmenting tools available with Windows.


The second one is more tricky. The LoTRODATDeframenter doesn't work with DDO anymore. Allegedly there is no internal fragmentation in the files.
Now the truth is that there is some fragmentation under the guise of duplicated data... I don't want to give the details ( for the obvious reason that I want to keep playing the game ), but there is definitely some data duplication in the file.

If you want to look deeper in to that there's lots of information on the web about the file format and how to read it. ( Hint : Asheron's Call DAT File Format is the same )

[golruul]

Assuming you're not on an SSD, treat them like any other file: run defrag. From what I remember, Windows gives a report at the end saying how many fragments a particular file has. If for some reason that isn't good enough, copy the files, delete the original ones, then rename the copied files.

[Seikojin]

Yes it still works.

[Flavilandile]

you're lucky if it still works...