why is the write/save speed so slow?

amandainjapan

Hi all. 

The saving speed of a scene, regardless if it is over the currently open file (Save) or a new file (Save As) is taking a REALLY long time. It's only writing at 3mb a second, and so my scene files (yes, they are animations, and yes they are big, 2 to 4 gigs) are taking like 45/60 minutes (or more, this is getting really ridiculous) to save. It goes Not Responding, but I've learned to just wait, make sure it's on High Priority with not quite all the CPU cores selected in affinity, and to be patient. 

 

But, still man, this is super slow and cramping my workflow, because DAZ is also occasionally crashing and getting access violations (although enabling UAC virtualization has helped a bit with stability), so I have to save often and lose valuable work time. I'm spending more time waiting for the file to save than actually working. The "Writing Assets" phase only takes a few seconds, gets to 100%, and then the anxious waiting starts. If I refresh the folder where I am saving (I've tried several), I can watch the tmp file creep up bit by bit, BUT I have to make the folder Non-Read-only first for an update. I have NO idea why it keeps resetting to read-only. I have used Take Ownership and everything.

I *am* about to update my drivers (edit: this did not help), but otherwise, what gives and how do I fix it so I can work without wanting to tear my hair out? 

 

PerttiA

Not the only place where DS file handling feels strangely slow with the hardware in use.

amandainjapan

yeah, i bought this machine specifically for DAZ and spent a bunch of buckaroonies, so when this sort of thing is the problem, i get very frustrated. >.< 

TheKD

Do you have a realtime antivirus running? If so try turning it off and saving. Some AV can go nuts trying to scan as it's saving.

CGI3DM

I don't know if this will help you.
But in other situations, when a program writes a lot of small files, writing to the disks becomes very slow.
When I have done a backup of DAZ Studio the speed has reached 500kb / sec, especially in external drives.

What I have done is "Enable write caching on the device" and "turn off windows write-cache buffer flushing" and this has considerably increased the writing of small files in some cases 10-20 times faster. But a failure in the power supply would generate corrupted files.

To know if that is your situation, you can see the activity of the disk where the DAZ Studio data is written, if it is at active time 100% it is almost certain that if you will get an improvement by enabling the cache.

 

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/21904-enable-disable-disk-write-caching-windows-10-a.html

other options

https://superuser.com/questions/470334/extremely-high-disk-activity-without-any-real-usage

 

 

amandainjapan

Thank you both! I don't have a realtime antivvirus, made sure to shut that off, but I will check out the write caching. 

Robinson

I would take it off "high priority".  Let the OS decide what needs cycles.  It's been quite a while since you were better at managing these things than your OS.  I would also check a few other things, such as whether you're using "fit control", which if you don't remove unused morphs has a tendency to massively balloon file size and save/load times.  I mean by a factor of TEN.  Otherwise, I haven't really noticed any change in speed with Daz and drive type.  HDD, SDD, M.2, they're all more or less the same.  The determining factor is how empty your library is.

amandainjapan

Thank you. Now to find out how to remove unused morphs.

 

nate_c399e9f1

What type of disk is the scene/project saving to? If you haven't already, I would store your projects onto a second large capacity SSD as they are much faster than writing to a spinning disk. Either sata or nvme would be better than a mechanical drive. If this is what you are doing already, I then suggest getting a second SSD(it doesn't matter what type, but nvme is faster and my personal choice) and save your projects on a temp seperate drive, then run your two or more SSDs in Raid 0 in Windows(look up how to do it properly for your setup). That stripes the data across both drives for improved read/write performance.

That will definitely speed up the drives performance. Just know that if one drive fails everything will be gone, so make sure you backup your work in a safe folder or seperate machine.

I hope this helps. 

Also if you can, check to see if you can bump up your cpu and ram speed a little, that might help with moving and saving the files. Just make sure your temps don't get too hot. Stay under 70 degrees celsius for constant use.

amandainjapan

Thank you, I'll look into that kind of drive as well. I really appreciate everyone trying to help. :)

nate_c399e9f1

Just curious, what are the specs of your computer you are rendering from? All parts like drives, cpu, ram, graphics cards, etc.