Best Way to Defrag Steam Games?

Cookeh · 27 May 2010 at 14:52

As per the title really.
Steam's defrag is awful, and many other defrags (such as Windows Defragmenter, and others) are completely useless for defragging the game files.

Anyone know of any software for it?

Regards,
Cookeh

Delboy · 27 May 2010 at 14:57

Hey, I take that as a personal insult!

alex24 · 27 May 2010 at 14:58

How do you know the defrag is awful? By what means are you testing it I mean?

Jsbeer · 27 May 2010 at 15:00

I think Iobit's Gamebooster had an option to defrag game folders.

Dave**** · 27 May 2010 at 17:47

I use O&O Defrag. I never use the steam one unless it decides it needs to do it, which was once I think.

Wouldn't think there would be a need for what you are asking if you defrag your PC regularly though.

PapaLazaru · 27 May 2010 at 18:16

Just use a decent normal defragger, like Defraggler.

LabR@t · 27 May 2010 at 19:32

defrag before install and then you shouldn't need to do again as its not as if the data is ever written again other than save/config files is it?

iviv · 27 May 2010 at 19:39

I was under the impression that the fragmentation that steam suffered from was all internal, as in inside files. Go to the steam\steamapps folder and check out some of the file sizes. Especially on source 2007 shared materials.gcf, source materials.gcf and source sounds.gcf.

These files contain data for all the sourge games you have. Get another one, or when one is patched, the data is added into those gcf files. This means that inside that file, the data can become gragmented as textures are added/edited/removed. Steam defrag defrags the data in these files, so no other program can defrag them.

At least thats how I believe it works :3