Defrag Steam

[natapon 124]

From Steam Forums - http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1059495

Disk Cleanup + Defrag

 

Greatly helps with those who suffer from extreme loading times. A clear out of all unused programs and downloads will speed up your computer. Disk Cleanup can be accessed by Right Clicking the desired Drive and accessing Properties. Under ‘More Options’, you can also clear ‘System Restore and Shadow Copies’ and this frees up several gigabytes of space.

 

The default Windows Defragment is fine but for those who desire a better program, Defraggler is a great program which provides a better visual representation of the defragment process than Vista.

 

Despite defragging the computer, the steam GCFs remain scrambled and cannot be defragged using either the windows defragmenter or Defraggler. What I recommend is using GCFscape to defragment these files:

 

1. Install GCFscape

2. Download HLLib.zip

3. Place the bin files (hlextract.exe and hllib.dll) from the Hllib.zip into your steamapps directory.

4. Type the following into Notepad and save as ‘gcfdefrag.bat’ into the steamapps directory:

 

Code:

@echo off

for %%F in (*.gcf) do "HLExtract.exe" -f -p "%%F"

pause

5. When Steam is off, run ‘gcfdefrag.bat’ and it will defrag all your GCF game files.

 

This needs to be done after every update due to VALVe scrambling the GCF files every time. (Special thanks to ZeBool for posting this, it seems not many people know about this.

 

As this guide is about 6 months old, the link to HLLib may be dead from time to time. You get the files from here:

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wofiel

Righto, well it's not all of HLLib, but it's enough to defrag your GCFs.

http://www.mediafire.com/?yjemntyzjyw

Just put the three files in the zip in your steamapps folder and run the bat file.

 

Since we are all lazy people, I've uploaded the file at the below link. Just extract to steam apps and run the bat. Cheers

Download from here

 

[Arylikh 0]

I just wanna add on that the version of HLLIB nata provided here will result in an error once the defrag process reach the "team fortress 2 content.gcf". The size of the file is bigger than 4gb.

 

In order to fix this, please download the latest Nem's tools at:

http://nemesis.thewavelength.net/index.php?p=35

 

Assuming you had used nata's file and extract it in the proper place, extract the latest HLLIB.zip file and go into it's bin folder, select the architecture folder your computer is running in and then copy the two files in that folder (HLExtract.exe & HLLib.dll). Override the files in the steamapps folder. Running the ".bat" provided by nata should now work without errors.

[natapon 124]

someone please run and verify this. then i'll update the first post

[babyshawn2 0]

Aw shucks, can't even do it. Mac user.

[natapon 124]

so far i dont think there is such a tool for mac users.

[babyshawn2 0]

It really sucks when you want to go into map making or dedicated server hosting when you go into the tools bar on steam, click on the application, only to see *application name here* is not available on you current platform.

 

I jelly of windows

[r3sty 7]

nata, confirmed that it works on x86. was wondering why the silly thing wasn't defragging. ta arylikh

[Arylikh 0]

Mmm for mac ppl:

A MacFUSE file system handler called GridMount is available for those looking to run HLLib on a Mac.

 

From here: http://yaakovs.wordpress.com/software/gridmount/

 

I don't have a mac in hand so you'd have to experiment this yourself.

 

I have a lot of problems with steam, which i think everyone does. Thanks a lot to nata for the original post. He could recompile again with the new files for download, i just updated it thats all.