HDD Taking Several Minutes After Quitting a Session or the Game

[SomethingAncient]

Every time I quit a session, whether a server or single player, my HDD spends 3-5 minutes in full activity, and I have trouble doing anything else. I thought it was just the way the game ran, which is why I made a wish list post, but apparently it's mostly me. I've loaded the DCS and SRS logs, because those are the things running, and occasionally killing SRS improves my game stability quite a bit (but that's before I quit).

My specs are as follows:

-Ryzen 3300X (stock clocks)
-AMD R9 390X (MSI 'Gaming' version)
-16GB Crucial (2 sticks) @3600MHz
-HDD Digital Western 2GB

I make sure not to have any background programs running and have exceptions set for my antivirus.

DCS-SRS-InGameRadio.log DCS-SRS-GameGUI.log DCS-SimpleRadioStandalone.log dcs.log

[draconus]

1 hour ago, SomethingAncient said:

...have exceptions set for my antivirus.

Yes, make sure to have both DCS main directory as well as DCS saved games there.

I'd start with taking out the mods (even if just for testing) - you have quite a few installed including textures mod.

It's advised to set your Windows page file fixed size = 32GB (min/max).

Last but not least - if this "HDD Digital Western 2GB" is really HDD, not SSD type, it'll always be your main offender here - the tech is thing of the past and it's slooow. With SSD prices these days you're making yourself huge disservice not jumping on SSD already.

The dcs.log says the closing takes 15s so the rest is Windows releasing memory and managing page file (DCS has no bearing on that). What takes 15s on SSD will take minutes on HDD and it's normal.

Of course the more memory the better and less disk swapping.

[SomethingAncient]

On 11/17/2022 at 2:11 AM, draconus said:

I'd start with taking out the mods (even if just for testing) - you have quite a few installed including textures mod.

It's advised to set your Windows page file fixed size = 32GB (min/max).

The dcs.log says the closing takes 15s so the rest is Windows releasing memory and managing page file (DCS has no bearing on that). What takes 15s on SSD will take minutes on HDD and it's normal.

Of course the more memory the better and less disk swapping.

Going line by line:

1) The mods I have installed are not used in any of the servers I use. They shouldn't ever load in. If they do, perhaps I need to make a new wish list post asking for a more discerning loader?

2) This seems like a bad thing to do with Windows. I intentionally reduced page file size from stock because Windows was abusing it and slowing everything down. On a Linux distro with better garbage collection and less memory leakage, I could see this working.

3) Huh... so it's Windows crappy page file management that's eating up all that time. Whilst that doesn't fix my issue, it does explain it. Thanks.

4) True, I want to add more RAM but am not in a good position to do so at the moment. I'm looking at January at the earliest based on my finances.

[draconus]

What is in saved games/dcs/mods it gets loaded - simple as that.

You may think it's wrong but setting this big page file keeps many DCS players from crashes and problems to this day.

[SomethingAncient]

I see. Too bad, I think it would help a lot of people if the game only loaded what the server/session needed. I mean, there's already a compatibility check so maybe it wouldn't be too difficult to implement.

I'm not going to disagree with you for those players. I just know that I don't want to change my page file size before and after I play DCS because Windows does like to abuse it and slow my system for everything else.