Reduce map load times in Valve games

[Morbo]

Steam's current built-in defragmenter uses Window's defrag utility, which cannot defrag inside GCF files.

To properly defrag your game files, either opt-in to the latest Steam Client Beta (which now defrags inside GCF files AND at the file system level, but requires you to defrag each game individually), or do this:

Grab the latest HLLib here and extract it. Move HLExtract.exe and HLLib.dll to your steamapps folder, and make a text file and put the following lines in it:

@echo off
for %%F in (*.gcf) do "HLExtract.exe" -f -p "%%F"
pause

Save it as gcfdefrag.bat, then close Steam, and run Task Manager to make sure steam.exe is dead.

Run GCFDefrag.bat, and it'll go through every single GCF and defrag it, and it does a better job than the internal tool.

Thanks to Nem (author of HLLib and GCFscape) for the information.

I'd do that every single time you get a game update, and every time you download a new game.

This greatly reduces map load times for me in TF2.

 

[Insurge]

I'll wait for the next steam client

 

[Morbo]

The only problem with the client is you have to defrag each game individually, this method defrags every file at once.

 

[Desert Fox]

I made the bat file, I'll see how well it works for me.. thanks.

 

[Rellik]

nevermind.