Help me understand how MT uses HD space.

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Oryan77
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Help me understand how MT uses HD space.

Post by Oryan77 »

I have a campaign file that is just under 1gb in size. It contains all of my tokens (I have a lot). Each token has a Handout image so the file size adds up. This campaign contains four maps worth of tokens. I don't actually run games on this file. It's just where I edit my tokens.

The Startup Preferences are Max heap size = 8G, Min heap size = 4G, and Thread stack size = 10M. Windows 10 with 32G memory.

I have MT installed on an internal 1GB SSD Drive that currently has only 6GB remaining.

My issue is that when I load this file and work from these maps, it uses up every bit of that drive until I have about 3MB of free space left. If I'm lucky I'll have 250MB of free space. This causes me to not be able to save the file because there is not enough HD space available to run the saving process.

I understand 6GB is pretty low for a HD to have these days. I'm just wondering though, is this normal that MT would swallow up the entire 6GB of space while it's open considering how big the cmpgn file is? Are my Startup Preferences set wrong? I'd like to know if I have a bigger problem on my hands, if I'm doing something wrong, or if this is a normal expectation with the current version of MT (v1.8.5)? Thanks.

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aliasmask
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Re: Help me understand how MT uses HD space.

Post by aliasmask »

The largest file I've ever had was 117MB. I don't think MT does anything special other than caching, but once that's done it doesn't keep growing from the same data. I think only a general system cleanup would help you clear some space. Since you said your HD is 1G and your file is 1G, I assume you meant something bigger for the HD. Windows page file for 32GB could be up to 5GB, anything close to your page file size is when it's time to cleanup or get a new drive.

I would recommend going through your drive and deleting things you don't need like old games you can re-install. Then download an app to compare images and look for duplicates. It must take forever to load a 1Gb MT file. I usually have a blank core campaign I work on and import maps (*.rpmap) as needed. I suspect your token database has a lot of oversized images. I found 400x400 to be plenty big for tokens, but no smaller the 200x200. You can download an app to batch file convert those images to smaller more reasonable sizes and format. jpg vs png.

taustinoc
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Re: Help me understand how MT uses HD space.

Post by taustinoc »

If you're on Windows, pull up the start menu and type in "Disk Cleanup." That should let you open an app that will safely delete temporary files that Windows create a *lot* of. Once it's open (this can take a while), you should see an option to "Clean up system files" (this will also take a while to get ready). Then select the various categories (some of which can be dozens of GB) to delete (this will also take quite a while).

Note that if you delete temporary internet files, you may lose login credentials for web sites. But this can be a lot of disk space.

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Oryan77
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Re: Help me understand how MT uses HD space.

Post by Oryan77 »

I actually have 5gb of HD left, and when I load my 1gb campaign file, my HD space drops down to 250mb or less.

Is this expected behavior? Is this just windows creating cache while the file is open?

I can actually install MT to another drive and run it from there instead. So HD space isn't really my issue. I was just trying to understand if using up 5gb of HD space while MT was open is expected behavior for this size of a file or if I have a bigger issue on my hands. The space is restored once I shut down MT. I just don't fully understand why a 1gb file would cause 5gb worth of HD space to be used while the file is opened. I was hoping someone here could confirm that this is normal or if I needed to adjust my settings in MT preferences.

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Full Bleed
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Re: Help me understand how MT uses HD space.

Post by Full Bleed »

Oryan77 wrote:
Wed Jun 16, 2021 11:03 am
I actually have 5gb of HD left, and when I load my 1gb campaign file, my HD space drops down to 250mb or less.
5GB on a 1 TB drive is too little space to be working with. Not just for MT. For *anything.* Clean up and clear space on that drive (a LOT of space) or accept the inevitable and get a new one or add a new drive to your system and offload *half* of what's currently on it. When you get within 10-20% of a drive's capacity it's time to upgrade or clean house with a flamethrower. Otherwise you're courting issues.

And 1GB for a MT campaign file is also extremely large. Like the biggest I've ever heard of by like a factor of 5. And probably 10 times what most people (currently use.) So finding info on how and what that does will be tough since you're on the fringe. Virtually every MT campaign file corruption issue I've ever seen (confirmed) comes from low memory and/or during file save. You're, potentially, dangerously close to bumping heads with both those problems.

It really sounds like you're using the campaign file itself as an image repository. Like a "folder" on your computer. I suggest you not do that. Use your hard drive to store the thousands of images files you have. Use the Campaign file to store the maps and assets you're actively using in a game.
I can actually install MT to another drive and run it from there instead. So HD space isn't really my issue. I was just trying to understand if using up 5gb of HD space while MT was open is expected behavior for this size of a file or if I have a bigger issue on my hands. The space is restored once I shut down MT. I just don't fully understand why a 1gb file would cause 5gb worth of HD space to be used while the file is opened. I was hoping someone here could confirm that this is normal or if I needed to adjust my settings in MT preferences.
For reference, I'm using an 8G/8G/8M memory setting in MT. My current main campaign file is only 161MB (which very large and could be trimmed down considerably at this point since there are a lot of unused maps.) When I load it, the used storage space on the drive that has MT installed does not significantly change. Neither does the space on the drive I use for MT's data drive (separate drives.)

So I don't know/think what you're seeing is the default behaviour of MT. Though it might be the default behaviour of your OS when the drive space gets that low and you load a lot into memory.
Maptool is the Millennium Falcon of VTT's -- "She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts."

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Oryan77
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Re: Help me understand how MT uses HD space.

Post by Oryan77 »

Thank you for the detailed explanation. That helps wrap my mind around what's going on a lot.

I don't actually use the 1g campaign file for anything other than creating and storing tokens on it. I use high resolution token images and each token has a high res handout. That's why it's such a big file. All of my tokens are saved, so I don't really need the campaign file. I just wanted to verify what my issue here was. Thanks again.

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