Slow thumbnail generation for files on external drive

[sourceavenger]

I have a probably obvious question but I cannot seem to figure out why no matter what I try its not working as intended. XNViewMP says here in the feature list it has multi-processor support but my cpu never goes above 15-16% usage and I have a AMD Phenom x6 1100t processor so I know if I could get it to use most if not all the cores it would improve my thumbnail building speed and the over all program performance. Is there some hidden setting im missing to allow more processor usage? I tried using process lasso to make sure cpu afinity is on all my cores, cpu parking is disabled, etc. Also I even gave realtime priority and high i/o priorty to xnviewmp which still hasnt allowed it to go past the above mentioned speed.

Thanks and I love XNViewMP .

[m.Th.]

I have a probably obvious question but I cannot seem to figure out why no matter what I try its not working as intended. XNViewMP says here in the feature list it has multi-processor support but my cpu never goes above 15-16% usage and I have a AMD Phenom x6 1100t processor so I know if I could get it to use most if not all the cores it would improve my thumbnail building speed and the over all program performance. Is there some hidden setting im missing to allow more processor usage? I tried using process lasso to make sure cpu afinity is on all my cores, cpu parking is disabled, etc. Also I even gave realtime priority and high i/o priorty to xnviewmp which still hasnt allowed it to go past the above mentioned speed.

Thanks and I love XNViewMP .

The thumbnail generation - is most probably - an I/O bound process rather than a CPU-bound one. IOW, the programs waits for the HDD (or even SSD) to service the file rather than CPU to extract the thumbnail from there - especially if we speak about file formats with embedded thumbs inside (JPG, some TIFF, Camera RAWs etc.).

Also, be sure to post your questions in new threads - here it is a little difficult to spot them

[sourceavenger]

Ahh okay, so is there any way to verify if thats the actual problem? I have my anti-virus and hips/sandboxing services off and have all the performance options for the drive enabled. Its a seperate drive than my internal drive. It is encrypted with Truecrypt so maybe it effects xnviews overall speed? Also, I will take your advice if I ever have any other questions ill post a new thread .

Note: I also keep my external drive defragmented all the time so I dont believe its due to fragmentation. I use PerfectDisk to do that.

[m.Th.]

Ahh okay, so is there any way to verify if thats the actual problem? I have my anti-virus and hips/sandboxing services off and have all the performance options for the drive enabled. Its a seperate drive than my internal drive. It is encrypted with Truecrypt so maybe it effects xnviews overall speed? Also, I will take your advice if I ever have any other questions ill post a new thread .

Note: I also keep my external drive defragmented all the time so I dont believe its due to fragmentation. I use PerfectDisk to do that.

You can use Performance Monitor for that. If your disk has a (big) waiting queue (which it is the most probable cause) then this is it.

If you have 3 disks then, the best layout would be: 1.) OS disk, 2.)XnViewMP's database disk 3.) Photos - if not you can have the OS and the DB disk on the same (which is the default) but the performance will not be the same.

Truecrypt certainly does make a difference, especially if it doesn't use the AES hardware instruction set which is to be found in the latest CPUs. Usually you do not need this unless if you have a laptop (if this is the case, then your HDD is slower than a desktop one) and/or you have very sensitive information. If you have sensitive data, then there are two cases:

1.) the photos are outside of this - then you must simply make a different partition for the TrueCrypt and leave the photos unencrypted
2.) the photos are sensitive and then you must live with this - a SSD will certainly help. BUT be aware because the paths, file names, EXIF data and thumbnails are stored in the XnView's DB and hence the DB must be protected also. And this is a bigger resource hog than it seems because DB file is changed often during the thumbnail generation (like in any other such program).

WRT to your defrag (PerfectDisk) if you have a SSD, isn't needed and the things will be actually worse. If you have an HDD... hmmm... I don't think that nowadays it will make a big difference. Anyway if you run it in idle times then it will be ok.

[sourceavenger]

Ahh okay I have the database on my system drive(which is AES encrypted) and my external drive has the photos ONLY, its AES encrypted aswell. CPU power definatlly isnt the bottleneck as my 6 core processor can handle pretty much anything ive thrown at it. The main issue seems to be speed of the disk itself. I have been defragmenting the drive, have it set for performance in its settings, disabled anti-virus and sandboxing applications and also changed the block size considering the drive only holds photos. I have no idea on how to increase performance anymore. My system drive isnt the issue with performance its the external.

I know truecrypt has about a 5-10% performance hit on the drive but I didn't think it would effect it as much as it did. I know my hardware isn't hadware accelerated with AES but my cpu/memory benchmarks for truecrypt show 900Mbp's. Is there any advanced settings or ways to improve disk i/o with xnviewmp?

[m.Th.]

My system drive isnt the issue with performance its the external.

If I read correctly the above ( ) you want the external drive to be faster. Usually there are some things here to consider (besides, of course, disabling TrueCrypt):

General hardware things:

1. The external I/O chain is a true USB3 ? Perhaps you know this but because you didn't mention it I'll write it for you: IOW, inside of the box is a fast SATA HDD which is in an external HDD box with a true USB3 controller connected through an USB3 cable (ok, this is easy - almost all cables support it) at an USB3 port (beware, not all USB ports on mobo are USB3. Just the blue ones).

2. IF the external drive is a Brand Name Box (IOW, you bought not only the empty box (it costs 10-20 $) but the box with the drive inside) it is possible that inside you have a 'green' HDD - i.e. a disk which is slower than the normal ones. (IOW in marketing speak: "the green disk consumes less energy and it is more environmental friendly." ...but this is achieved by lovering the rotation speed of the disk and hence the IO throughput).

XnView related things:

1. If you have to generate thumbnails for Raw files (iow CR2, NEF, ARW, ORW, PEF etc.) then you can speedup significantly the process by telling the engine to read only the embedded thumbnail from the file by setting "Use Embedded Preview" in Tools | Settings | View -> "Camera Raw use:" (explanation: usually the raw files contain one or more JPGs inside which are much smaller than the entire raw file and hence XnView can much more quickly read and generate the thumb).

2. You can put XnVIewMP to generate the thumbnails for an entire (sub)tree of folders in the idle/overnight times. There are several methods for this - perhaps the most simple is by going to Tools | Settings | Database and press 'Add Folder...'. Here if you'll choose the 'c:\foo', XnViewMP will scan the entire subtree of it (c:\foo, c:\foo\bar, c:\foo\bar\baz etc.)

just my2c & HTH

[sourceavenger]

Wow I cannot believe I missed what the actual bottleneck is. It's not the drive itself its because im using USB 2.0 :/. I don't have a usb for USB 3.0 and my external drive is actually usb 2.0 aswell. Sigh, im sorry for overlooking such an obvious bottleneck lol. I was thinking initially maybe it was the drive speed itself till you mentioned USB.

[CameronD]

.... I don't have a usb for USB 3.0 and my external drive is actually usb 2.0 aswell. ....

Any chance you can use e-sata instead?