Forcing WO display pc's to use second disk

[Dieter Vansteenwegen]

I know it has passed at least once before on the mailing list, but can't find the post in my mailbox anymore.

What's the syntaxis to have the display pc's use a specific directory on a second disk to store their content on?

One of my dedicated display pc's is having playback issues, which are very noticable in a widescreen configuration and I trying to find out if the disk is the issue.

And ofcourse, having a second dedicated disk, I should use it as well

 

Thanx!

[jfk]

I know it has passed at least once before on the mailing list, but can't find the post in my mailbox anymore.

What's the syntaxis to have the display pc's use a specific directory on a second disk to store their content on?

One of my dedicated display pc's is having playback issues, which are very noticable in a widescreen configuration and I trying to find out if the disk is the issue.

And ofcourse, having a second dedicated disk, I should use it as well

 

Thanx!

Here is the ShowRoom forum post that you are referring to ...

 

[strong]From: Mike Fahl

Reply-To: Showroom

Date: Mon, 11 May 2009 09:31:58 +0200

To: Showroom

Subject: Re: changing the folder for display's media

[/strong]

i want to change the route of the files on my display's computer. my

watchout is installed in the default route(c:dataton...) and i would like

the files of the display's to be stored in a different folder on a second partition.

does anyone know how to do that?

There's an (undocumented) command line option that can be passed to

the WATCHOUT display software to allow for this. This is what the

"Target" field in the application shortcut would look like to use this

feature:

 

C:\WATCHOUT\WATCHPOINT.EXE -ShowPath /e:/Shows/

 

In this case, WATCHOUT is installed on the C drive, and the files are

stored in the Shows folder on the E drive. Note that the path

parameter to the -ShowPath command line option has a somewhat unusual

format. It starts with a slash before the drive specifier (to indicate

an absolute path), and it uses forward slashes throughout rather than

backslashes.

 

Put this command line option into the shortcut you use to launch the

display software. If you have it auto-start when the computer is

started, don't forget to also put it into the shortcut used in the

Startup folder.

 

FYI, we have experimented a bit with putting the show data on an SSD

drive, while keeping the software itself on the hard drive. For

certain shows, which need to access lots of files very rapidly, this

can make a noticeable difference in that it pretty much eliminates the

issue of disk fragmentation.

 

Mike

 

 

---

[ThomasL]

Apologies digging this old List post up. I tried exactly as Mike said, and Windows refused to accept the line in the shortcut "Target" field saying it was not valid. Did anyone have any success doing this exactly as indicated?

 

I solved it my way with a workaround, eventually pointing the -ShowPath /e:/Shows/ to my RAID 0 drives instead of c: drive.

 

1. First I copied the line from the shortcut "Target" field to Notepad, deleted the quote marks at both ends of the command line, added echo off before it, and made some changesto conform to the 8-character DOS limitation, then saved this as Watchpoint.bat. I therefore had the following as my batch file -

 

echo off

C:\Progra~2\Dataton\Watcho~1\Watchpoint.exe -ShowPath /e:/Shows/

 

Note: Above is for Win7 64-bit which installs Watchout into Program Files (x86) = Progra~2

For 32-bit OS, it would be Progra~1 instead.

 

2. Created a shortcut to this on the desktop.

3. Then changed the icon of the shortcut to Watchpoint's icon.

 

Tested and my 3-display Show files from RAID 0 drives run much much smoother than from my C: drive (a single 7,200rpm ordinary SATA drive).

Graphics card: Asus EAH6950 2GB.

CPU: old Intel Q6600 overclocked to 3.0GHz

Mobo: old Asus P5Q Deluxe with 6GB RAM

Power supply : Gigabyte 450watts (yes I know, just barely enough for the EAH6950)

Watchout 5