Single or many WoW installs?

[Tonuss]

I'm intrigued at the prospect of putting the four alts in a single WoW folder instead of four. But performance so far has been acceptable (aside from the time I spent in Shattrath City... sheesh). Also, I have two of the four one one SATA drive, and the other two on another.

With current motherboards sporting anywhere between four and eight SATA ports, and with SATA using separate channels for each drive, a future multi-boxing system could contain four relatively small (and thus inexpensive) SATA drives, each with its own WoW installation. Hrm, I'd better stop or I'll start browsing NewEgg again...

[Zite83]

I run 3 and sometimes 5 (my two room mates) from one folder.. I haven't noticed any performance problems of any kind. Might give it a shot with 2 or more folders to see what happens.... Right now what is killing me is my hard drive... Just upgraded my computer big time and now I am starting to notice my old hard drive slowing down my everything.

[Gallo]

So, I want to throw my story into the fray. I've been 5-boxing for quite awhile now (ran a "pve" group Pr/Ma/Ma/Lock/Warr to lvl55 before I realized that I really wanted a PVP group, and now have 5 shamans to 56) and ever since I started I've used the 5 separate folders of WoW method. I always read that the performace was slighty better doing that, and that its easier to keep track of mods and such for clones.

Well, using this method I always MAJORLY lagged in IF and i could not use Boats as a method of transportation because the boat would be pulling away from the destination before my load screen would finish on all 5.

For shits and giggles this weekend, I was reading this thread and decided "Hey, maybe I'll try 5 WoWs from the same folder. A few changes in my keyclone command editor and I was up and running. Holy crap what a difference. Everything loads so much faster. Instances/zoning/boat rides/logging in/logging off/etc.

For now, I'll be sticking to this method.

Just my 2c.

[Bluepants]

I used to go with 4 wows in 4 folders, for the sake of macroes and addons.
However i have 5 seperate disks in my system, so last night i decided to test 4wow each on seperate drives.
And the difference was INSANE! i mean.. For example: Flying from HH to shatt, used to be a laggy experience, and when i landed i shatt i ususally had to wait 1-3minutes to see the structures, and 4-5 to see the first NPC. But with 4 disks i saw the flightmaster as i landed!
I can do some more testing tonight, clock some load times. (portal to exodar, IF and SW with a fresh system)

[Djarid]

Ok, I changed my 5 wow folders to 2 folders (on separate disks)

Well nearly... I deleted the DATA and Patches folders in 3 of my installations and used junction.exe to create reparse points instead.

WOW what an improvement in load times... previously my main would be waiting around for the clones to come online but now all 4 clones come online together a second or so before my main. A significant improvement.

Some of this performance increase must be down to the disk cache on the drive (8Mb on mine), as each client must be requesting the same information in a very similar timeframe the disk can probably service all 4 requests in a similar time to a single one. This prevents the head seeks that the drive would have had to do previously.

[Sarduci]

Some of this performance increase must be down to the disk cache on the drive (8Mb on mine), as each client must be requesting the same information in a very similar timeframe the disk can probably service all 4 requests in a similar time to a single one. This prevents the head seeks that the drive would have had to do previously.

You are correct sir! 8)

Glad to see my work helped the above people out.

To comment on the 6 or 8 port SATA boards, running multiple drives in that scenario may give a slight advantage in exchange for a higher electrical requirement and the need for better system cooling which may need power requirements (and a whole different set of issues when you go high end) of its own. I may add another single drive to my system and move WoW to that, but only after i find some way to fill the 200GB worth of empty space I have right now.

If anyone has any data to the opposite, please share that also and maybe we can make some suggestions as to why.

[Lynly]

OK, stupid question, but it has to be asked. I know a bunch of tools to defrag my drive, but how does one move an entire folder to the edge of the hard disk?

[Taipan]

Ok, I changed my 5 wow folders to 2 folders (on separate disks)

Well nearly... I deleted the DATA and Patches folders in 3 of my installations and used junction.exe to create reparse points instead.

WOW what an improvement in load times... previously my main would be waiting around for the clones to come online but now all 4 clones come online together a second or so before my main. A significant improvement.

Some of this performance increase must be down to the disk cache on the drive (8Mb on mine), as each client must be requesting the same information in a very similar timeframe the disk can probably service all 4 requests in a similar time to a single one. This prevents the head seeks that the drive would have had to do previously.

Greetings,

This sounds like a very interesting thing to try (I have a 10k raptor) but I'd really hate myself if I screw it completely and have to do a full 5 WoW installs + patches + Macro setups + Keyclone etc.

- @Djarid, my immediate question around Junction is : apart from saving disk space, is there any benefit in deleting Data and Patches files in previously used 3 folders ?
(the idea is to try with junction and if it doesnt deliver, just delete the junctions and immediatly go back to 5 directories).
I assume you wrote those Junction examples in the Wiki.

- @ all, 2nd question : how about going for Main on Raptor and 2 alts on 2nd Sata drive and 2 alts on 3rd Sata ?

- 3rd one : there are Sata 16Go SSD (Solid State drives) for under 300 Euros now while a typical WoW client is around 10Go (uncleaned).
Those claim access time about 100 times faster than most regular drives and most reviews seem to confirm a gigantic leap indeed.
Could this be the ultimate solution for 5 accounts -with Junction- while OS stays on Raptor ?

*already has the credit card in hand, ready to shoot*

/salute

[pb13]

Just a note on solid state drives, their seek times are effectively zero (no physical motion), however, continuous read/write speeds are on par and sometimes worse than even some of the 7200rpm drives. Its something to think about given the price per gigabyte compared to good old hard disks.

[Taipan]

Greetings,

Here's my update on this Junction hint.

I was suspicious -ie concerned this may screw my setup and require a full reinstall- but implemented it and all I can say is WOW !: 5 boxes load in less than 5 sec (vs. up to 1 min before or even worse in Shattrah).
Entering AV is immediate and I don't lose an alt on /follow anymore due to loading times while running around.
Simply the best advice ever to boost 5-boxes performance (and it's free :thumbsup: )

I did it the old fashion way : emptied the Data folder on wow2 - 5 directories and "junction" them all to the WoW1 Data folder.
Thus I keep 5 directories with dedicated macros and add-ons.
Note 1: junction.exe must be placed at c:\ root and you access it through the old Dos "command" window. It will list all command options when you first type "junction" there.
Note 2 : data folders on WoW2-5 must be emptied first or Junction will fail (I put their content in "databackup" folders for the sake of safety).
Note 3 : there's a basic Junction page in the Wiki here with the typical command to use for us Mboxers.
If you feel the need to delete the junction link, use the junction delete command (as opposed to deleting the junctioned data folder with File Manager : it may work or it may bring chaos, pretty touchy thing that I didn't even think of daring to consider to try ;( )

I'll order a SSD Sata 16go drive to install the Data folder there for my 5 clients and see if this can boost even more the performance of 5-boxes.
I understand that SSD drives don't deliver better than most Sata drives, especially Raptors, when it comes down to write speeds.
But I assume -maybe incorrectly as I'm a poorly IT skilled person- that Data files are just read, not written.

Again : best performance boosting advice -for software Mboxers- I found here, simply brilliant.
Thanks to all of you who found it, shared it and explained it.

/salute