Does Symlinking really make a difference?

[Gares]

I use Windows 64 with 4 Megs of RAM for my 5 box, with the tcpackfreq edit. Everything works pretty good, but like the old story goes I lag in Shat pretty much. Its really the only place, and am wondering if Symlinking would help that problem?

I guess I really need to read a little better to understand what I should be doing cause I am a little confused on that part but I run like this.

C:\WOW1
C:\WOW2

I use WOW1 for my main and WOW2 for my slaves so I'm not exactly sure how I should link them...

I found a thread with the following but not sure if this is the correct way to go about it:

Sure. This assumes you have multiple WoW folders, or you will not be able to use it.

1. Create a separate WoW folder for each of your accounts. Just copy/paste you main folder several times. Preferrably, both the main and newly copied WoW directories should be on your 2nd hard disk that is not your C-drive where Windows resides.
2. Delete the "data" folder inside the new WoW folders (not the original WoW folder though).
3. Download junction from this location: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysin…s/bb896768.aspx.
4. Extract the executable to c:\
5. Open a command prompt and type c: and then cd\
6. Let's assume your main folder is d:\wow1, and the copies are d:\wow2, d:\wow3, etc.
Type "junction d:\wow2\data d:\wow1\data"
Type "junction d:\wow3\data d:\wow1\data"
And so forth for each backup.

Note that you can't delete these using explorer later on or you will delete your original data folder... use "junction -d d:\wow2\data".

Its also stated in this post to Symlink the data and cache folders of the slaves to the main in order to increase overall performance. Can anyone confirm?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Does the lag eventually settle down on your box? What I mean is, does it only lag for the first 30-seconds to a minute, mostly? If it lags constantly the entire time you're there no matter how long you sit there, then the symlinking will probably not help you. For those of us that lag badly for a few seconds and then see it clear up, this indicates that it only lags while textures/models are loaded from the hard disk, which symlinking greatly helps with. For constant lag, that's an indication that your system just doesn't have the horsepower (or interwebz speed) to handle the constant activity there.

That's my nickel explanation, anyway. ;)

[edit]
Oh, and regarding symlinking, I would use a junction linking tool like Winbolic or JunctionMagic to do it with and (most importantly) experiment on another test directory FIRST before you do it with your wow folders. ;)

[Sarduci]

Try it for yourself. Nobody else has your setup. If you don't like it, revert back.

For me it did not. I run everything out of one directory with no issues. Running out of one directory or symlinks is always better than running out of multiple copies.

[Bot]

heres the link to the thread ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=4854') i used. it worked flawlessly. im also using vista64 and what i did was symlink the 4 slaves to the main data file. thats 5 installs spread over 2 drives as well and it may not be the best way to do it. im not sure if it will help if youre only running off of one drive. the thread pretty much says it all you have to read more than just the first post though it gets cleared up better further down the line. and like ugh said it probably wont help if the lag is constant as opposed to periodic.

[pengwynman]

-snip- double post, see below (deleting posts doesn't work btw)

[pengwynman]

I use Windows 64 with 4 Megs of RAM for my 5 box, with the tcpackfreq edit. Everything works pretty good, but like the old story goes I lag in Shat pretty much.well you see, the reason you're lagging in shatt is because you're only using 4 Megs of ram for 5 instances of WoW. pretty impressive that you can even boot into Vista, not to mention open wow 5 times.

[Gares]

I use Windows 64 with 4 Megs of RAM for my 5 box, with the tcpackfreq edit. Everything works pretty good, but like the old story goes I lag in Shat pretty much.well you see, the reason you're lagging in shatt is because you're only using 4 Megs of ram for 5 instances of WoW. pretty impressive that you can even boot into Vista, not to mention open wow 5 times.

I don't have any problem with booting up Vista at all with only 4 megs of RAM. I am going to upgrade to 8 in the new year however. Like I said I can easy run all 5 instances just always in Shat I lag when I take all 5 of my chars there at once, but not if I only take like 2-3 at a time.

Also my lag settles pretty much right after start up of the instances. I have the occasional bad lag day but overall its great with less then 40ms on all 5 clients now.

I'm also tempted to maybe move the installs off of my C:\ drive and move them over the my other HD. Its exactly the same but just used for storage but I don't know if that would make a difference.

[Hachoo]

He was being sarcastic as I'm pretty sure you meant to say 4 GIGS not 4 MEGS.

[Solon]

For my setup, Vista 64, q6600, 4gigs, one HD, 9800GT, 5 WoW folders, I would lose follow entering Orgrimmar (Shat was worse), and it would lag badly for about 2 minutes. When I symlinked the data and cache folders I now enter any city with less than 10 seconds of lag of any sort. For me, symlink = win.

[Gares]

The way I suggested is good then to Symlink them?

Also yeah I was tired when I wrote that I meant to say 4 Gigs not megs

[Coltimar]

Since I started symlinking (my setup below) the lag in major cities is all but gone, but I have a new problem. Ever so often everything will freeze for 2-5 seconds. This happens every once in a while and I think it may be a RAM issues.

Here's my dealio:

C:\Winders (160 GB 7200 RPM Sata2)
D:\World of Warcraft (500 GB 7200 RPM Sata2 drive) I run a full copy here. I update this one.
E:\Wow0, Wow1, Wow2, Wow3 and Wow4 (2 Raid 0 10k drives) I symlink addons, cache, data and WTF all back to D:\World of Warcraft

My 4GB is a very serious problem. Honestly, it may be enough but if I keep telling myself it isn't I can justify going to 8GB. 4GB SUCKS! Bin Laden runs 4GB of RAM!

Ok, off to NewEgg.com . . .

[Crucial]

Colt - if you're symlinking everything to D: you're not getting the benefit of your raid 0 setup - DATA and CACHE are the most important folders to have symlinked and should reside on E: from what I gather about your setup, then your clones should link to that. Also if you are symlinking your WTF folders then I would have to assume that you are using the same configuration files for each instance which you may not want to do - especially if you want to assign each instance to a particular cpu/core.
For example this setup works good:

C:\Windows (OS drive)
D:\Wow1\ (Raid 0: contains a full copy of wow)
D:\Wow2\ (data, cache, interface, logs, screenshots symlinked to D:\Wow1\, WTF is not symlinked)
D:\Wow3\ (as above)
D:\Wow4\ (as above)
D:\Wow5\ (as above)
etc

[Coltimar]

Awesome, I will move my main copy to the Raid 0 drive and try not symlinking my WTF.