one vs multiple wow folders

[hatesquared]

Hello all and thanks for the help in advance,

Started 4 boxing a couple of days ago and like most am hooked, after working through some general setup time its awesome. I could ramble on about how good this site is and the software recommended but you all know its great.

Here is my question, I originally setup 4 wow folders (one for each) but after watching the keyclone setup video where they all point to one, I'm second guessing my decision. It seems I'll have alot of overhead with patches and crap. Should I run from one folder or are there benefits to multiple folders? If it helps the only other add-on I'm looking at using is Jamba.

-hate

[shaeman]

I have six wow folders.

The first one is my solo play wow folder.

The other 5 are for multiboxing. I have hardlinked (mklink command in Vista) the Data, Interface and Cache directories from my solo play wow folder.

Come patch days I patch the solo play folder. I then go to the wow folder and sort by date modified and select only those files changed that day - ignoring the Data, Interface and Cache folders.

I copy them across to wow1 - wow5 and that's it I'm good to go.

[Fef]

Some say running multiple folders helps. These will advice you to build symbolic links to a unique data folder to save disk space and make updates easier.

I personnaly run 5 clients from one single folder. This folder, however, is on a good SSD drive. This does a lot in terms of performance. You might want to give this a try as these drives tend to get cheaper and cheaper.

[Raigirin]

I have 5 wow folders and my process on patch day is pretty much similar to Shaeman's.
So far this have worked well for me, well Dalaran is lag city for me, but I can even feel it soloing.

[Gadzooks]

I run 5 accounts on one 24" iMac, and make 4 symbolic link folders, and only have to "manage" one folder - makes patch day a breeze. It's pretty easy to do, honestly, and saves a ton of HD space.

[Svpernova09]

I run 1 wow folder off a 1 tb 7200rpm 32mb Cache drive. Before I used ISBoxer and virtualized config.WTF, I was using keyclone with multiple folders. I see a noticeable increase in performance in using 1 folder instead of multiple.

[Zzyzxx71]

I run 1 wow folder off a 1 tb 7200rpm 32mb Cache drive. Before I used ISBoxer and virtualized config.WTF, I was using keyclone with multiple folders. I see a noticeable increase in performance in using 1 folder instead of multiple.

This.

I only use 2 folders, and run both off of a 64gb SSD. The main folder is for my main (more addons, etc), the second folder is all the slaves. Sometimes I think the slaves load up TOO fast.

[hatesquared]

Thanks all for the reply. I'm going to try the single directory and see if I have any poor performance if so, I'll read up on the MKLINK command, at first glance I need to understand the pointers, etc. better.

Thanks again for the help.

-hate

[bartholomeo]

ah, good to see this topic.

I currently run from 6 accounts ( 1 solo, 5 for boxing ) and things aren't moving too fast when in full combat with spells flying all over the place.

I'll try the solo account right now :)

[Ualaa]

Pretty much the only advantage of multiple folders over a single folder is different configuration options for each folder.

For example you can have your solo play folder with every option cranked to the maximum.
With only the one account going, any computer capable of running 5+ accounts will be relatively smooth.

You can have another folder with most options down/off, except say viewing distance.
You then run the lead toon from this folder.

Have another folder with every option down as far as they will go.
Run the slaves from this folder and their tax of the system will be minimal.

Symlinks, mklinks, junction points etc, are getting the data from a single parent drive.
As far as performance goes they're not noticeably different from a single folder.
Symlinks etc or a single folder should be faster then multiple non-linked folders on the same drive.

I've heard if you have wow on two or more physical drives it can be faster then everything on one.
Because you're accessing the information simultaneously instead of one then the next.

If your software has virtual configuration files, then you can have all the benefits of separate/symlinked folders, but only one physical folder.

A single folder to patch is simple on patch days.
With multiple folders I have had issues in the past -- some patches were fine, and others have forced a reinstall which sucked.

[Raigirin]

Got intrigued by the symlink possibilities and right now I am symlinking the data folder which has improved my loading times and reduced lag in major cities.
(I still have a separate interface folder for each instance.)

Since I am running on a quad core machine, I distribute the cores manually between the instances. (set affinity)
Before I started to do this all 5 instances had affinity set to core 1&2 only!
This has also helped performance wise.

[Ualaa]

WoW seems to be somewhat optimized for two cores.

I'd either go two cores per wow account, with some overlap.
Or just have every core on every account and let windows allocate CPU resources.

[Raigirin]

that is exactly what I thought :).
when trying to allocate cores via a bat file, the wow instances always "fell back" to core 1 & 2, so I assumed Blizz forced wow on 2 cores for a reason.

Now I run my master instance (all visuals to the max) on cores 1 & 2
and the 4 slaves on cores 3 & 4

(even though 1 instance on each core, with instance 4 and 5 sharing worked well in outlands too)

[aboron]

I use 1 folder for 5 wows on a 32gig ram ssd ( http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb01-product.jsp?idno_no=270&prod_no=ANS-9010&type1_title=%20Solid%20State%20Drive&type1_idno=13 ) and in addition to using a virtual config.wtf, I also do virtual addons.txt - this lets me maintain one addons folder full of everything, and turn them on and off per character or group.