How Can I Load Graal Faster?

[Shaman_King]

Every time I click to get on graal it takes about 2 minutes to load up the first window. How can I get this to load up faster? BTW I have a 1.3GHz processor speed so I don't really think thats the problem.

[Ibonic]

RAM disk!

have you defragmented your hard drive lately?

[Shaman_King]

How do I make a "RAM disk! "

And no I don't think I have

[LilNiglet]

Make sure you defrag your drive at least once a month. Also, use ScanDisk to check for any errors. Make sure you run AdAware and SpyBot S&D to make sure you don't have any malware running in the background. If all else fails, use HiJackThis and post it in an appropriate forum here, or better yet, post them on the Delteria Tech Boards. Make sure you ask nicely.

[Spark910]

Originally Posted by Shaman_King

How do I make a "RAM disk! "

And no I don't think I have

He means buy install/upgrade to more 'RAM'
You probably have a small amount which can be upgraded fairly easily.

[zell12]

If you don't want to spend alot of money on RAM and you might not have some good American monies like me, you should think about a 512mb stick of Samsung DDR400 PC3200

Few good RAM. Not some Kingston or OCZ but it is still good.
You can find it here or www.newegg.com probably.

[--Chris--]

Err...I got a recently formatted hard-drive, a 3.4ghz processor and like a gig of pc3200 400mhz RAM and I have the same problem o_O

[Admins]

I guess the simpliest thing is to make a small FAT32 partition and move the Graal files there. There is a problem with the startup of Graal because NTFS (the default windows XP/2000 file system) is really slow. Graal is scanning the subfolders for easily finding files, NTFS doesn't like that because it's indexing the files somehow. In the next Graal version I will try to speed that up, although it's not simple. The only ways to fix that right now is to install Graal on a FAT32 partition, or install it in a NTFS partition that doesn't have a lot of files.

[Crono]

Or you can just start it, and then after it starts once it starts faster later then all the sudden it starts instantly. But after you resart your comp it goes BLEH again. This problem started happening to me after I realized that I have a LOT of files on my graal thingy.

[calum]

Originally Posted by Stefan

I guess the simpliest thing is to make a small FAT32 partition and move the Graal files there. There is a problem with the startup of Graal because NTFS (the default windows XP/2000 file system) is really slow. Graal is scanning the subfolders for easily finding files, NTFS doesn't like that because it's indexing the files somehow. In the next Graal version I will try to speed that up, although it's not simple. The only ways to fix that right now is to install Graal on a FAT32 partition, or install it in a NTFS partition that doesn't have a lot of files.

I took the advice and mine only takes 3 seconds to load now, when it used to be about a minute.

[Ibonic]

Actually, I meant to set up a RAM disk/drive. It's basically an amount of the system RAM that's set aside and assigned a drive letter to be accessed similar to the way a hard disk drive is -- only it's a lot faster since the files are stored in the fast memory rather than on a slow hard drive. A lot of these also use the FAT32 file system.

Might not be a typical solution, but it would almost certainly make loading the game and some other things a lot quicker.

Some problems:
- Might not have enough RAM to spare for this.
If 'cutting it close', you might want to just try a bare minimum Graal installation, and uncheck the option to "Save downloaded images (to \levels\webgifs)" if your internet connection is better than through a dial-up modem.

- Files that are put onto the RAM disk will be lost when restarting the computer etc.
This can be worked around by using a program that will save and restore (or at least restore) them if needed when Windows is started.

But this isn't really meant to be stable, especially if you actually want to keep your PM history and so on. Normally RAM disks are used for temporary space.
For example: You could also use a RAM disk for temporary internet files for your browser etc. -- makes loading web sites a lot quicker if you have a fast connection.

It's easy to find more information about setting one up if you're interested.

There are also quite a few 'tweaks' that will make the NTFS faster, but I suppose I'll hold back on that for now.

Originally Posted by Spark910

He means buy install/upgrade to more 'RAM'
You probably have a small amount which can be upgraded fairly easily.

[HoudiniMan]

My problem arrises from having between all the folders in just /levels/ a hair under 30,000 files to load. Perhaps I'll try moving it to a FAT32 based partition and see if it improves, but I'd also like to hear these 'tweaks' Ibonic is talking about.

[zell12]

I better HD makes things open faster. Try a raptor.

[HoudiniMan]

I don't think that would make a marked increase in loading speed, perhaps not even noticable, because some of us having these problems load everything else quite quickly.

The problem is graal having to scan the folders with so many objects and aparently NTFS slows that process down a lot.

[Shaman_King]

Originally Posted by Stefan

I guess the simpliest thing is to make a small FAT32 partition and move the Graal files there. There is a problem with the startup of Graal because NTFS (the default windows XP/2000 file system) is really slow. Graal is scanning the subfolders for easily finding files, NTFS doesn't like that because it's indexing the files somehow. In the next Graal version I will try to speed that up, although it's not simple. The only ways to fix that right now is to install Graal on a FAT32 partition, or install it in a NTFS partition that doesn't have a lot of files.

How do I make a seperate FAT32 partition? and EVERYONE!: simpliest is the new word