Thread: Turbine LOTRO Dat File Defragmentation Tool - Now Available!

Thanks to a couple team members, we're making a public a command line tool to be able to address the internal dat file fragmentation (vs. external fragmentation which regular disk defragmenters address).

What this will do for you?

- Speed up game loads
- Speed up teleports
- Reduce hitching (not all hitching.... just load related hitches)

Granted if you were on an SSD or flash drive, the improvement will not be nearly as big as compared to the majority of folk still on mechanical disks.

Link to the KB article:

NOTE: There are issues downloading with Internet Explorer at the moment. Please try downloading the zip with alternate browsers for now.
http://na6.salesforce.com/_ui/selfse...0180000000QGhY


A couple things to re-iterate from the KB:

(.NET Framework 2.0 required)

1. It's for LOTRO only. Please don't use it on DDO or AC.
2. It's brute force. Make sure to have enough disk space (have the equivalent to the largest dat file free on the disk )
3. We've done a bit of testing to release it to you all, but it is basically a programmer tool.
4. It's not a fast tool, it's effectively doing a massive file copy if it determines it needs to defragment a file.

I'd call out the specific devs for the kudos, but they don't have forum handles for me to single out. Thank the Game Platform team at Turbine. (Though for those that played in some of the beta points, +Akash is largely to thank).

Fantastic, I can't wait to try this.

I think the link to the actual file is missing from the KB article.

KB link for the tool isn't updated yet. [link removed]

Originally Posted by Bunsen

KB link for the tool isn't updated yet.

Thanks, I'm grabbing it now. I've been waiting for this for a long time; my load time when starting the game averages 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

Thanks. I'm looking forward to seeing if this can solve some of the small problems I have been having for a couple months now.

Originally Posted by Bunsen

KB link for the tool isn't updated yet. In the meantime, the link is here:

http://content.turbine.com/sites/tur..._datdefrag.zip

Heh. This file seems to be double zipped. When you extract the original file, you end up with a single file named "turbine_datdefrag" without an extension. You have to add .zip to that file, then extract again.

Oh, very nice. My laptop runs LotRO just fine (better than most people I know with fancy systems), but my load times are terrible as my poor hard drive chugs away. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if it's because those files have become scrambled eggs, in spite of my regular defrag efforts. As I understand, regular defrag just gets the scrambled eggs back into the same bowl...but they are still scrambled, lol. I'll definitely be trying this out!

after unzipping to the lotro folder, it's working now

Thank you very much and a sincere thanks to the team members that took the time to do this. I really appreciate it.

I would also like to express my thanks for this utility. So... Thanks!!

Mom always said it was important to send thank you notes, so I hope this makes someone feel good about their hard work.

If not, maybe try booze.

is this tool only for the live client, or will it work with the bullroarer client as well?

Originally Posted by Dean340

is this tool only for the live client, or will it work with the bullroarer client as well?

It should work fine with bullroarer as well.

Originally Posted by Bunsen

It should work fine with bullroarer as well.

awesome...thank you!

Tried several times to download file, even with antivirus turned off, but ended each time with invalid file that can't be extracted. Any suggestions? Btw, is file only 134k or the problem is I didn't got whole file.