Question About Defragmenting

I'm planning to use an external hard drive in FAT32 format to play the games. What I'm a little confused about is defragmenting. Are the games to be added or is my external HD supposed to be defragmented?

If I'm using USBUtil v.2.00 to add my games, do I still need to defrag? Do I need to manually create any directories in my external HD or does USBUtil v.2.00 do it for me?

When I used USBUtil, I went to "Create game from ISO." The program then returned several 1 gig files, and a message said "Game cannot be read or is empty in use" when the progress bar reached 100%.

Is this what I'm supposed to do in order to install the games on my external HD? And these 1 gig files seem fragmented, so are these what I need to defragment?

Clarifications are very appreciated.

Answer 1:

Yes you use that to install your games to your external HDD.

Answer 2:

Yes you need to defragment the HDD, after every game is installed.

Answer 3:

No you DO NOT need to manually create any directories in the external HDD.

Answer 4:

And yes the games are broke into 1GB files, and they need defragmented after each game is installed as I said before.

Hope that helps

DJ

Thanks, what does it mean when the program says "Game cannot be read or is empty in use"?

If you don't defrag your hard drive after you install and remove games, what will happen? Will this cause a game loading error or playing error while playing a game from a USB hard drive?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SaltyDogs

Thanks, what does it mean when the program says "Game cannot be read or is empty in use"?

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If I remember right that's a bug of that version, try the newer 2.1 and you shouldn't get that error anymore.

After you install a game on your HDD always defragment soon after, this will keep things smooth.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by versatileninja

If you don't defrag your hard drive after you install and remove games, what will happen? Will this cause a game loading error or playing error while playing a game from a USB hard drive?

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The game won't load at all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Delyrium

Quote:

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Originally Posted by versatileninja

If you don't defrag your hard drive after you install and remove games, what will happen? Will this cause a game loading error or playing error while playing a game from a USB hard drive?

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The game won't load at all.

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This reply is incorrect at present. It may/should become true in future releases which can check for fragmentation before attempting a launch, but it is not true for currently available releases. These current versions have no way of checking if a game is fragmented so they will attempt to launch the game even when that is the case.

If any one of the game image files is fragmented, then the virtual disc indexing will fail for all game disc sectors beyond that fragmentation point, which inevitably leads to crashing when the affected file data is program code to be executed.

So the normal result of such fragmentation is total crash of the game program.

But some future releases may instead simply refuse to launch the game, telling the user to defragment it first.

Best regards: dlanor

Does defragmenting the drive alone do the trick or do I have defragment each file I added?

What I thought was doing it for the drive defragments all the files, but that may not be the case since I can't load Dragon Quest 5, which was confirmed working in the compatibility thread. I get that message "File cannot be read or is empty in use" with version 2.1, but in Spanish I think.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SaltyDogs

Does defragmenting the drive alone do the trick or do I have defragment each file I added?

What I thought was doing it for the drive defragments all the files, but that may not be the case since I can't load Dragon Quest 5, which was confirmed working in the compatibility thread. I get that message "File cannot be read or is empty in use" with version 2.1, but in Spanish I think.

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You need to defrag, after every install of a new game..

DJ

Are you talking about the drive itself or the individual files?

Here's a tip, if you tried to load the cfg file on USBUtil and every game listed is 'ok' , then proceed with checking if one or more files on your drive is fragmented...

to do this...

open the command prompt then type the following:

chkdsk f:\*.??

change 'f' to the correct drive letter of your USB drive. Just open my computer and you'll see it in there...

if any of the game files are fragmented, it will report which files are fragmented (it will show the fragmented file's filename.)

now open power defragmenter and choose those files reported to be fragmented... :D it will defragment those files... :)

you can check it again on the command prompt if all of your files are already fragment free!!!