Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released!

Thus spake john.dsl DeleteThis @verizon.net (John Lewis), Sun, 13 Jan 2008 04:42:52 GMT,
Anno Domini:

>>>Er, just curious. Why do you install games on your C: drive?
>>
>>Because I only have 2 physical drives (2x160Gb SATA 7200s) & my D: drive is
>>my storage drive that gets a constant P2P thrashing, so I'd get even worse
>>performance out of apps/games there. Imo, multiple partitions on the same
>>drive don't provide enough of a performance boost over a single one to
>>bother, assuming you defrag & do the housekeeping on the single
>>partition/drive regularly. I'd rather just have a single large-ish bucket &
>>manage it all by directories. Happy to be proven wrong, as always
>>
>>--
>>Nostromo
>
>I personally much prefer to keep anything away from my C: drive that
>could crash the partition. And I only bother to systematically image
>the C: partition. A small C: partition means a very speedy backup of
>all critical data. Games can readily be re-installed. I do quite a lot
>of professional video-editing. All that data is manipulated on a
>couple of separate hard-drives and I image in-process video work
>regularly to a large external USB 2.0 drive.... transfer-rate is ~ 1.5
>Gbytes per minute.

You're probably right & I should be a bit more organised where my personal
computing is concerned, considering my middle name professionally is
'organisational'! I may well consider doing just what you suggest on my
next system or reinstall of this one - cheers John.

--
Nostromo
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

"willbill" <trek.TakeThisOut@worldwide.net> wrote in message
news:fmd9th01d5i@enews1.newsguy.com...
> willbill wrote:
>
>> one of the walkthruoughs that i got at www.gamefaqs.com
>> mentioned that they'd played thru with the unofficial
>> 2.3 patch, presumably done by Werner
>>
>> i didn't try to find that patch (to check the size),
>> but for those interested in playing thru Bloodlines
>> at least *twice*, maybe that's the sweet spot?
>>
>> d/l the 2.3 zip, and then load the game, do the
>> official 1.2 patch, and then only do the basic
>> part of the 2.3 zip and play away.
>>
>> then uninstall, d/l the 4.5 exe (or later), and then
>> load the game again, do the official 1.2 patch again,
>> and then do the full exe update.
>
>
> hmmm...
>
> i see that
> www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/vtmb/downloads.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=file...ag=file
> shows:
> ver 1.9 = 30.7MB
> 2.1a = 50.7MB
> 2.2 = 64.9MB
> 2.6 = 86.8MB
>

When I bought the game through Steam it was the 1.2 ver. Since all the read
me's say that the newest patch says it takes the game from 1.2 to 4.5 that's
what I did. The 4.5 exe patch installed without any problems. I have been
wondering why the exe ver. is smaller then the zip ver. seems it should be
the other way around. But I don't know anything about compiling programs, so
I'm in the dark about this. JLC
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

JLC wrote:

> "willbill" <trek DeleteThis @worldwide.net> wrote

>> i see that
>> www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/vtmb/downloads.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=file...ag=file
>> shows:
>> ver 1.9 = 30.7MB
>> 2.1a = 50.7MB
>> 2.2 = 64.9MB
>> 2.6 = 86.8MB


> When I bought the game through Steam it was the 1.2 ver. Since all the read
> me's say that the newest patch says it takes the game from 1.2 to 4.5 that's
> what I did. The 4.5 exe patch installed without any problems. I have been
> wondering why the exe ver. is smaller then the zip ver. seems it should be
> the other way around. But I don't know anything about compiling programs, so
> I'm in the dark about this. JLC



my one guess is that the size diff is due
to use of a different compression program

anyway fwiw i went with the 1.9 version.
i got lucky (with gamespot, Sunday afternoon)
and it "only" took 2.6 hours.

fwiw, with the 2.6 readme (available on
gamespot without doing the d/l) Werner
used the word word "basic"

3.2 also uses the word "basic" (didn't check 3.1)

2.2 doesn't seem to have an included separate readme.

2.1a has readme for 2.0, with no mention of "basic"

1.9 readme does not use "basic"

bill
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

Thus spake Nostromo <nospam.DeleteThis@forme.org>, Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:23:18 +1100,
Anno Domini:

>Thus spake john.dsl.DeleteThis@verizon.net (John Lewis), Sun, 13 Jan 2008 04:42:52 GMT,
>Anno Domini:
>
>>>>Er, just curious. Why do you install games on your C: drive?
>>>
>>>Because I only have 2 physical drives (2x160Gb SATA 7200s) & my D: drive is
>>>my storage drive that gets a constant P2P thrashing, so I'd get even worse
>>>performance out of apps/games there. Imo, multiple partitions on the same
>>>drive don't provide enough of a performance boost over a single one to
>>>bother, assuming you defrag & do the housekeeping on the single
>>>partition/drive regularly. I'd rather just have a single large-ish bucket &
>>>manage it all by directories. Happy to be proven wrong, as always
>>>
>>>--
>>>Nostromo
>>
>>I personally much prefer to keep anything away from my C: drive that
>>could crash the partition. And I only bother to systematically image
>>the C: partition. A small C: partition means a very speedy backup of
>>all critical data. Games can readily be re-installed. I do quite a lot
>>of professional video-editing. All that data is manipulated on a
>>couple of separate hard-drives and I image in-process video work
>>regularly to a large external USB 2.0 drive.... transfer-rate is ~ 1.5
>>Gbytes per minute.
>
>You're probably right & I should be a bit more organised where my personal
>computing is concerned, considering my middle name professionally is
>'organisational'! I may well consider doing just what you suggest on my
>next system or reinstall of this one - cheers John.

Btw, how do you get around the annoying 'feature' of Windoze when apps want
to install themselves in C:\Program Files, many which do it w/o even asking
you? I'd love to just have the OS on a nice, small 10Gb partition for
imaging, but this one nuisance + the creeping doom of windows disk usage has
always deterred me. I also have a 4Gb fixed swap file which I've left in the
root dir of C: drive, again because the D: drive is a P2P thrash drive & I
thought it made more sense to keep the swap file away from that constantly
used & heavily fragmented drive. Any/all advice much appreciated.

--
Nostromo
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:21:18 +1100, Nostromo <nospam RemoveThis @forme.org> wrote:

>Thus spake Nostromo <nospam RemoveThis @forme.org>, Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:23:18 +1100,
>Anno Domini:
>
>>Thus spake john.dsl RemoveThis @verizon.net (John Lewis), Sun, 13 Jan 2008 04:42:52 GMT,
>>Anno Domini:
>>
>>>I personally much prefer to keep anything away from my C: drive that
>>>could crash the partition. And I only bother to systematically image
>>>the C: partition. A small C: partition means a very speedy backup of
>>>all critical data. Games can readily be re-installed. I do quite a lot
>>>of professional video-editing. All that data is manipulated on a
>>>couple of separate hard-drives and I image in-process video work
>>>regularly to a large external USB 2.0 drive.... transfer-rate is ~ 1.5
>>>Gbytes per minute.
>>
>>You're probably right & I should be a bit more organised where my personal
>>computing is concerned, considering my middle name professionally is
>>'organisational'! I may well consider doing just what you suggest on my
>>next system or reinstall of this one - cheers John.
>
>Btw, how do you get around the annoying 'feature' of Windoze when apps want
>to install themselves in C:\Program Files, many which do it w/o even asking
>you?

Which ones?

I allow the MS Windoze apps, Professional third-party apps and key
utilities, emailers etc. to always install in their default locations.
Makes for much less grief at the time of major updates.

I never install any games in the C: partition. For some games you do
need to manually intervene by clicking Browse on the install-directory
screen. Some games alternatively use a "Custom Install" setting to
allow you to choose something other than C:\Program Files for the
target install-folder.


> I'd love to just have the OS on a nice, small 10Gb partition for
>imaging, but this one nuisance + the creeping doom of windows disk usage has
>always deterred me.

My C: directory (XP Pro) has around 12Gbyte occupancy. (The partition
size is 20Gbytes.) Remember that I also have some rather large
professional apps on the C: drive. I use my faithful old workhorse
Drive Image 7.03 to image the partition about once per week With
"medium" compression Including a full blockverify it takes about 15
minutes to image the C: drive to an external hard-disk. ( CPU X2 4400+
Toledo )

> I also have a 4Gb fixed swap file which I've left in the
>root dir of C: drive, again because the D: drive is a P2P thrash drive & I
>thought it made more sense to keep the swap file away from that constantly
>used & heavily fragmented drive. Any/all advice much appreciated.
>

I just let Windows decide swap file space. All resident in the C:
partition.

John Lewis

>--
>Nostromo
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

John Lewis wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:21:18 +1100, Nostromo <nospam.DeleteThis@forme.org> wrote:
>
>> Thus spake Nostromo <nospam.DeleteThis@forme.org>, Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:23:18 +1100,
>> Anno Domini:
>>
>>> Thus spake john.dsl.DeleteThis@verizon.net (John Lewis), Sun, 13 Jan 2008 04:42:52 GMT,
>>> Anno Domini:
>>>
>>>> I personally much prefer to keep anything away from my C: drive that
>>>> could crash the partition. And I only bother to systematically image
>>>> the C: partition. A small C: partition means a very speedy backup of
>>>> all critical data. Games can readily be re-installed. I do quite a lot
>>>> of professional video-editing. All that data is manipulated on a
>>>> couple of separate hard-drives and I image in-process video work
>>>> regularly to a large external USB 2.0 drive.... transfer-rate is ~ 1.5
>>>> Gbytes per minute.
>>> You're probably right & I should be a bit more organised where my personal
>>> computing is concerned, considering my middle name professionally is
>>> 'organisational'! I may well consider doing just what you suggest on my
>>> next system or reinstall of this one - cheers John.
>> Btw, how do you get around the annoying 'feature' of Windoze when apps want
>> to install themselves in C:\Program Files, many which do it w/o even asking
>> you?
>
> Which ones?
>
> I allow the MS Windoze apps, Professional third-party apps and key
> utilities, emailers etc. to always install in their default locations.
> Makes for much less grief at the time of major updates.

Those are mostly what I'm talking about, plus some games & other mickey
mouse s/ware that has on occasion just dumped things under the root dir
on C:, or in Program Files, without so much as asking.

The point here is, if you're still installing Windows software (MS & 3rd
party) to your C: drive, you've lost control & can't say with any
certainty how big your partition will need to be. Plus you'll still
suffer from fragmentation due to constant (un)installing, so apart from
imaging a nominally smaller partition, what are the real benefits? None
I can see.

My grand vision was to have an almost static C: partition (around 10Gb)
with just the OS on it. Never grows (well, hardly, apart from MS's
stoopid all-DLLs-in-one-bucket design) & you can maintain it & image it
very easily.

> I never install any games in the C: partition. For some games you do
> need to manually intervene by clicking Browse on the install-directory
> screen. Some games alternatively use a "Custom Install" setting to
> allow you to choose something other than C:\Program Files for the
> target install-folder.

Well aware of all that. All good s/ware installers should allow you to
choose your dest drive/dir.

>> I'd love to just have the OS on a nice, small 10Gb partition for
>> imaging, but this one nuisance + the creeping doom of windows disk usage has
>> always deterred me.
>
> My C: directory (XP Pro) has around 12Gbyte occupancy. (The partition
> size is 20Gbytes.) Remember that I also have some rather large
> professional apps on the C: drive. I use my faithful old workhorse
> Drive Image 7.03 to image the partition about once per week With
> "medium" compression Including a full blockverify it takes about 15
> minutes to image the C: drive to an external hard-disk. ( CPU X2 4400+
> Toledo )

I'm only taking backups using Nero BackIT to rotating DVD-RWs every
week. Must invest in an external USB drive methinks.

>> I also have a 4Gb fixed swap file which I've left in the
>> root dir of C: drive, again because the D: drive is a P2P thrash drive & I
>> thought it made more sense to keep the swap file away from that constantly
>> used & heavily fragmented drive. Any/all advice much appreciated.
>>
>
> I just let Windows decide swap file space. All resident in the C:
> partition.

You can get significant swapping benefits if you create a fixed size
swap file, preferably away from the OS drive, of about twice the size of
your physical memory. Give it a try - you might notice windows starts
up quicker & apps thrash a bit less.

--
Nostromo
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

"John Lewis" <john.dsl DeleteThis @verizon.net> wrote in message
news:478a95e4.7208060@news.verizon.net...
> On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:21:18 +1100, Nostromo <nospam DeleteThis @forme.org> wrote:
>
>>Thus spake Nostromo <nospam DeleteThis @forme.org>, Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:23:18 +1100,
>>Anno Domini:
>>
>>>Thus spake john.dsl DeleteThis @verizon.net (John Lewis), Sun, 13 Jan 2008 04:42:52
>>>GMT,
>>>Anno Domini:
>>>
>>>>I personally much prefer to keep anything away from my C: drive that
>>>>could crash the partition. And I only bother to systematically image
>>>>the C: partition. A small C: partition means a very speedy backup of
>>>>all critical data. Games can readily be re-installed. I do quite a lot
>>>>of professional video-editing. All that data is manipulated on a
>>>>couple of separate hard-drives and I image in-process video work
>>>>regularly to a large external USB 2.0 drive.... transfer-rate is ~ 1.5
>>>>Gbytes per minute.
>>>
>>>You're probably right & I should be a bit more organised where my
>>>personal
>>>computing is concerned, considering my middle name professionally is
>>>'organisational'! I may well consider doing just what you suggest on
>>>my
>>>next system or reinstall of this one - cheers John.
>>
>>Btw, how do you get around the annoying 'feature' of Windoze when apps
>>want
>>to install themselves in C:\Program Files, many which do it w/o even
>>asking
>>you?
>
> Which ones?
>
> I allow the MS Windoze apps, Professional third-party apps and key
> utilities, emailers etc. to always install in their default locations.
> Makes for much less grief at the time of major updates.
>
> I never install any games in the C: partition. For some games you do
> need to manually intervene by clicking Browse on the install-directory
> screen. Some games alternatively use a "Custom Install" setting to
> allow you to choose something other than C:\Program Files for the
> target install-folder.
>
>
The problem is that most games now save their user data (game saves,ini's)
in "My Documents/My Games. Or they just toss the data under the games name
into "My Documents". This can easily add up to a lot of space. I now that
you can change where you want "My Documents" to be placed, but I always
worried that some games would be to dumb to now what to do. I'm running XP
pro.
JLC
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

Nostromo wrote:

> John Lewis wrote:

>> On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:21:18 +1100, Nostromo <nospam DeleteThis @forme.org> wrote:

>>> Btw, how do you get around the annoying 'feature' of Windoze when
>>> apps want to install themselves in C:\Program Files, many which
>>> do it w/o even asking you?

>> Which ones?
>> I allow the MS Windoze apps, Professional third-party apps and key
>> utilities, emailers etc. to always install in their default locations.
>> Makes for much less grief at the time of major updates.


> Those are mostly what I'm talking about, plus some games & other mickey
> mouse s/ware that has on occasion just dumped things under the root dir
> on C:, or in Program Files, without so much as asking.
>
> The point here is, if you're still installing Windows software (MS & 3rd
> party) to your C: drive, you've lost control & can't say with any
> certainty how big your partition will need to be. Plus you'll still
> suffer from fragmentation due to constant (un)installing, so apart from
> imaging a nominally smaller partition, what are the real benefits? None
> I can see.
>
> My grand vision was to have an almost static C: partition (around 10Gb)
> with just the OS on it. Never grows (well, hardly, apart from MS's
> stoopid all-DLLs-in-one-bucket design) & you can maintain it & image it
> very easily.


with Win XP Pro, you can live with a 10GB
C: partition, *provided* you put the OS on
D: or E: (i prefer E: and i set up C: and
D: as fat32 coz it doesn't remember who
the "owner" is, whereas NTFS does (at least,
i haven't run into that annoying problem
(i keep 2 ID's for myself: a and b, with
b a non admin), so i try to keep a *large*
D: where i keep my downloads, letters, e-mail,
newgroup stuff); installs go onto the E: OS
partition, and i keep a large raid0 F: for temp
work file stuff (video processing consumes
large amounts of disk when you are busy)


>
>> I never install any games in the C: partition. For some games you do
>> need to manually intervene by clicking Browse on the install-directory
>> screen. Some games alternatively use a "Custom Install" setting to
>> allow you to choose something other than C:\Program Files for the
>> target install-folder.
>
> Well aware of all that. All good s/ware installers should allow you to
> choose your dest drive/dir.
>
>>> I'd love to just have the OS on a nice, small 10Gb partition for
>>> imaging, but this one nuisance + the creeping doom of windows disk
>>> usage has always deterred me.


see above


>>
>> My C: directory (XP Pro) has around 12Gbyte occupancy. (The partition
>> size is 20Gbytes.) Remember that I also have some rather large
>> professional apps on the C: drive. I use my faithful old workhorse
>> Drive Image 7.03 to image the partition about once per week With
>> "medium" compression Including a full blockverify it takes about 15
>> minutes to image the C: drive to an external hard-disk. ( CPU X2 4400+
>> Toledo )
>
> I'm only taking backups using Nero BackIT to rotating DVD-RWs every
> week. Must invest in an external USB drive methinks.
>
>>> I also have a 4Gb fixed swap file which I've left in the
>>> root dir of C: drive, again because the D: drive is a P2P thrash
>>> drive & I
>>> thought it made more sense to keep the swap file away from that
>>> constantly
>>> used & heavily fragmented drive. Any/all advice much appreciated.
>>>
>>
>> I just let Windows decide swap file space. All resident in the C:
>> partition.
>
> You can get significant swapping benefits if you create a fixed size
> swap file, preferably away from the OS drive, of about twice the size of
> your physical memory. Give it a try - you might notice windows starts
> up quicker & apps thrash a bit less.


i used to do that with Win98SE

i've been meaning to try it with XP Pro

fwiw, i also used my above partitioning
scheme with Win98SE but the "cooperative
sharing" nature of it was too iffy;
a couple of times install apps filled
defaulted to the C: drive and went bad
and filled up the partition

i had to go into DOS and manually spend
hours with Norton's detailed disk fix program
(still included with has System Works suite
thru the Win ME and Win 2000 days); name
escapes me for the moment)

bill
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

willbill wrote:

> JLC wrote:

>> "willbill" <trek.DeleteThis@worldwide.net> wrote

>>> i see that
>>> www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/vtmb/downloads.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=file...ag=file
>>>
>>> shows:
>>> ver 1.9 = 30.7MB
>>> 2.1a = 50.7MB
>>> 2.2 = 64.9MB
>>> 2.6 = 86.8MB


>> When I bought the game through Steam it was the 1.2 ver. Since all the
>> read me's say that the newest patch says it takes the game from 1.2 to
>> 4.5 that's what I did. The 4.5 exe patch installed without any
>> problems. I have been wondering why the exe ver. is smaller then the
>> zip ver. seems it should be the other way around. But I don't know
>> anything about compiling programs, so I'm in the dark about this. JLC


> my one guess is that the size diff is due
> to use of a different compression program


as a follow-on, the stuff in Werner's
unofficial updates is highly compressible

with highly compressible data there are
sometimes *major* diffs in the result size,
given different compression programs

>
> anyway fwiw i went with the 1.9 version.
> i got lucky (with gamespot, Sunday afternoon)
> and it "only" took 2.6 hours.
>
> fwiw, with the 2.6 readme (available on
> gamespot without doing the d/l) Werner
> used the word word "basic"


sorry for the possible confusion of the
above two mentions of "2.6". one is an
hour ref, and the other is a version ref


>
> 3.2 also uses the word "basic" (didn't check 3.1)
>
> 2.2 doesn't seem to have an included separate readme.
>
> 2.1a has readme for 2.0, with no mention of "basic"
>
> 1.9 readme does not use "basic"


fwiw, my best guess at this point is that
i misread the "basic" word into thinking
that with recent zip files one could do
1st a "basic" fixit update (keeping close
to the original released package w/1.2 patch),
and then follow-up with the remainder

my bad

i've very glad i went for the small 1.9 version

fwiw#2, i'm also very glad that i went for the
ver. 1.9 d/l (30.7MB) coz the zip turned up
with *two* CRC errors!

so either my d/l manager has problems
(which i'd hardly want to discover when
doing an ~ 200MB d/l (~14-to-20 hrs dialup!),
or there are two CRC errors on the gamespot
site for Werner's 1.9 version

which means i'll have to do the almost
3 hour d/l of 1.9 again, to verify which
is true. i'll post again (here) on this
by next Sunday night

fwiw#3, i tried 4 different unzip programs

1. 1st, whatever is packaged with the fairly
recent PowerDeskPro6 (didn't work)

2. then two very old DOS programs (pkunzip
and unzip386 (InfoZip), and both had problems
with names longer than 8.3 as well as very
long directory-path/file-names

(this done with the 30MB zip file in another
partition:\directory G:\1, which only had
the 30MB zip in the high \1 subdirectory)

3. 7zip; not sure if it's a 2nd zip in PowerDeskPro6
or something i d/l'd 2/3 years ago (from somewhere)
and which id'd the two problem files but did the
whole unzip (including the two problem files)
without quiting


the game is playing fine.

too soon to know if i'm going to like
it better than VTM-Redemption

bill
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

"JLC" <jc@nospam> wrote in
news:iu6dndsRPfQhJBfanZ2dnUVZ_j2dnZ2d@comcast.com:

>
> "John Lewis" <john.dsl DeleteThis @verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:478a95e4.7208060@news.verizon.net...
> The problem is that most games now save their user data (game
> saves,ini's) in "My Documents/My Games. Or they just toss the data
> under the games name into "My Documents". This can easily add up to a
> lot of space. I now that you can change where you want "My Documents"
> to be placed, but I always worried that some games would be to dumb to
> now what to do. I'm running XP pro.
> JLC
>

Yes, there are games that dumb, but they usually issue a patch about 3 days
after the game goes gold, when the howls of fury begin to echo around
corporate HQ.

Mark.

--
While I'll admit that anyone can make a mistake once, to go on making
the same lethal errors century after century seems to me nothing short
of deliberate.--V.
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:15:32 +1100, Nostromo <nostromo.DeleteThis@nospam.org>
wrote:


>The point here is, if you're still installing Windows software (MS & 3rd
>party) to your C: drive, you've lost control & can't say with any
>certainty how big your partition will need to be. Plus you'll still
>suffer from fragmentation due to constant (un)installing, so apart from
>imaging a nominally smaller partition, what are the real benefits? None
>I can see.
>

Huh? Uninstall ? Why ? I seldom uninstall anything in my C: partition.
No need. The only changes typically to my C: directory contents are
the result of Windows/Office updates and an occasional defrag every
few months takes care of these disturbances. Quite different from the
games situation, which I customarily uninstall after playing
through... especially the Single-player-only games, or those in which
I have zero interest playing the MP component.


>My grand vision was to have an almost static C: partition (around 10Gb)
>with just the OS on it. Never grows (well, hardly, apart from MS's
>stoopid all-DLLs-in-one-bucket design) & you can maintain it & image it
>very easily.
>
>> I never install any games in the C: partition. For some games you do
>> need to manually intervene by clicking Browse on the install-directory
>> screen. Some games alternatively use a "Custom Install" setting to
>> allow you to choose something other than C:\Program Files for the
>> target install-folder.
>
>Well aware of all that. All good s/ware installers should allow you to
>choose your dest drive/dir.
>
>>> I'd love to just have the OS on a nice, small 10Gb partition for
>>> imaging, but this one nuisance + the creeping doom of windows disk usage has
>>> always deterred me.
>>
>> My C: directory (XP Pro) has around 12Gbyte occupancy. (The partition
>> size is 20Gbytes.) Remember that I also have some rather large
>> professional apps on the C: drive. I use my faithful old workhorse
>> Drive Image 7.03 to image the partition about once per week With
>> "medium" compression Including a full blockverify it takes about 15
>> minutes to image the C: drive to an external hard-disk. ( CPU X2 4400+
>> Toledo )
>
>I'm only taking backups using Nero BackIT to rotating DVD-RWs every
>week. Must invest in an external USB drive methinks.
>
>>> I also have a 4Gb fixed swap file which I've left in the
>>> root dir of C: drive, again because the D: drive is a P2P thrash drive & I
>>> thought it made more sense to keep the swap file away from that constantly
>>> used & heavily fragmented drive. Any/all advice much appreciated.
>>>
>>
>> I just let Windows decide swap file space. All resident in the C:
>> partition.
>
>You can get significant swapping benefits if you create a fixed size
>swap file, preferably away from the OS drive, of about twice the size of
> your physical memory. Give it a try - you might notice windows starts
>up quicker & apps thrash a bit less.
>

Have tried. No significant benefit on my machine. Maybe the 2GByte of
RAM helps most of the time.

John Lewis

>--
>Nostromo
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

On Sun, 13 Jan 2008 17:24:13 -0800, "JLC" <jc@nospam> wrote:

>>
>>
>The problem is that most games now save their user data (game saves,ini's)
>in "My Documents/My Games. Or they just toss the data under the games name
>into "My Documents". This can easily add up to a lot of space. I now that
>you can change where you want "My Documents" to be placed, but I always
>worried that some games would be to dumb to now what to do. I'm running XP
>pro.
>JLC
>
>


Ah, yes I forgot about that in my communications with Nostromo. I do
keep track of the few games that use the My Documents/My Games
directory, and that does creat a disturbance to the size and
fragmentation of the C: drive, but it is small peanuts unless the
player stores a large number of saved-games and never deletes them.
Like you, I would have some concerns moving the My Documents directory
to any location other than the C: partition. Whenever I delete a game
that uses the My Documents directory, I also check that the associated
contents of My Documents are also deleted.

John Lewis
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released! 

On Jan 14, 9:16 am, "Mark P. Nelson" <markpnel... RemoveThis @sbcglobal.net>
wrote:
> "JLC" <jc@nospam> wrote innews:iu6dndsRPfQhJBfanZ2dnUVZ_j2dnZ2d@comcast.com:
>
>
>
> > "John Lewis" <john.... RemoveThis @verizon.net> wrote in message
> >news:478a95e4.7208060@news.verizon.net...
> > The problem is that most games now save their user data (game
> > saves,ini's) in "My Documents/My Games. Or they just toss the data
> > under the games name into "My Documents". This can easily add up to a
> > lot of space. I now that you can change where you want "My Documents"
> > to be placed, but I always worried that some games would be to dumb to
> > now what to do. I'm running XP pro.
> > JLC
>
> Yes, there are games that dumb, but they usually issue a patch about 3 days
> after the game goes gold, when the howls of fury begin to echo around
> corporate HQ.
>

Goddam neverwinter nights 2, and not fixed as far as I know.

I have an 8 gb drive as my C: only ran into problems with NWN2,
everything was fine before that. I occasionally check for
fragmentation, but there's never any to worry about over the last 4 or
5 years since I last built it.

- Justisaur
 >> Stay informed about: Unofficial Bloodlines Patch 4.5 released!