Defragmenting GW.dat file

[Tzuul]

After a bit of searching, I finally found the post by Beqxter a while back on the SoF forums regarding defragmenting the GW.dat file.

SoF Thread

Here's an abbreviated section of the original post, and a direct link to the software:

What to do? A small program called Contig works as a single-file defragmenter, and is quite easy to use.

Download it here.

Unzip the exe to your C:\WINDOWS\system32 directory.


Click Start -> Run -> 'cmd'

At the command prompt, type: contig -a "C:\Program Files\Guild Wars\Gw.dat" (this is assuming you installed it to the default directory). This will tell you how fragmented your file is.

To defrag it, run the same line again but without the -a flag. You might need to do a few passes to get it down to its minimum file size.

Both Kaitrin and I have run this in the past, and it seemed to reduce lag.