[starsiege]

guys i am installing final fantasy11, rise of the zilart, and the chains of prometihia.after installation the playonline is updating for almost 2 hours now!! what if i had to unintall this game and reinstall it again!

is there a way to download the updates patch for tese three and run them from my comp? as some other mmorps do to save time?

thanks

[Jei]

No. Need to update within the POL only.

I reinstall FFXI once every couple months. Not that bad if you have the latest collector's DVD edition, it's quite up to date.

[starsiege]

Originally Posted by Jei

No. Need to update within the POL only.

I reinstall FFXI once every couple months. Not that bad if you have the latest collector's DVD edition, it's quite up to date.

oh..i brought ehvanadiel colelction, with rise of zilart and chains of promethia on it. aww this sucks!

at least they could have a better server download rates!! im not utilising my 5mb/s line fully!!(((

[Jei]

oh no no, that's the one I have.\ lol ^^ If you install fromthe original CD, it can take up to 10 hours patching. So really, it's not bad.

[bside]

Originally Posted by starsiege

at least they could have a better server download rates!! im not utilising my 5mb/s line fully!!(((

Download itself only composes about half of the whole update process. Another half is for file check and decompress/install, which is the part that takes the similar amount of time no matter how fast your line is.

Besides, if I'm not mistaken, the update server is located in Japan, and you're very unlikely getting the full 5Mbps in that case, although dependant on your ISP's backbone. (Well, getting full 5Mbps is never possible, actually, because the transmission of data always include some packets reserved for things like error correction, so the most you can get is roughly 4~4.5Mbps.) Nevertheless, I agree that they should work on the download rate, as I'm not getting even 3% of my 100Mbps line, even though I live in Japan.

[bside]

Originally Posted by Jei

oh no no, that's the one I have.\ lol ^^ If you install fromthe original CD, it can take up to 10 hours patching. So really, it's not bad.

That's why I have the whole directory backed up on a separate drive. I don't have any of those all-in-one disks...

[Aeni]

Originally Posted by bside

That's why I have the whole directory backed up on a separate drive. I don't have any of those all-in-one disks...

Me too. On both PC and PS2, I have several discs. I have the original 4-disc set I purchased in October 2003 for the PC. The PS2 version was in November 2004. Then I have the CoP and ToAU expansion.

For me, it's not bad. When I last updated my PC version from a reinstall, it only took me 2 hours total. I don't know why it's taking someone 10 hours. I think that (a) you have a PC problem, (b) you have firewall interfering with your d/l rate (this is a commonly overlooked problem) or (c) in the case of the PS2, it means that your HDD might be failing.

[Taskmage]

Originally Posted by starsiege

guys i am installing final fantasy11, rise of the zilart, and the chains of prometihia.after installation the playonline is updating for almost 2 hours now!! what if i had to unintall this game and reinstall it again!
is there a way to download the updates patch for tese three and run them from my comp? as some other mmorps do to save time?
thanks

If I'm reading this right, you're patching each piece of software after you install it before moving on to the next? It would probably take much less time for you to install all the expansions and then patch it all at once. Successive installations are probably overwriting files you already patched with old versions off the disc.

Originally Posted by bside

That's why I have the whole directory backed up on a separate drive. I don't have any of those all-in-one disks...

Such good advice. Far too often have I had my hard drive hiccup and smudge a file or deleted something I shouldn't have when playing with dat mods and been forced to go through the entire installation process again. Keeping a backup saves so much time and headache.

[starsiege]

Originally Posted by Taskmage

If I'm reading this right, you're patching each piece of software after you install it before moving on to the next? It would probably take much less time for you to install all the expansions and then patch it all at once. Successive installations are probably overwriting files you already patched with old versions off the disc.Such good advice. Far too often have I had my hard drive hiccup and smudge a file or deleted something I shouldn't have when playing with dat mods and been forced to go through the entire installation process again. Keeping a backup saves so much time and headache.

err no..i install all the updates then i patch!

[bungiefan]

Originally Posted by starsiege

what if i had to unintall this game and reinstall it again!

Back up your install directory after every patch and store it on a different drive or on some other rewritable disk. I keep mine on an external hard drive, so if I get a friend to join the game or have to install on a computer, I just run the installer to set up the registry keys and then overwrite the folder with my updated version, saving hours of patch downloading.

If you don't keep backups, it's your own fault if you lose data and have to reinstall programs because of the need to reformat and reinstall, or because of data corruption. If any data is important to you, back it up on a seperate device so that you reduce the odds of all copies of it being destroyed at the same time.

[bside]

Originally Posted by bungiefan

Back up your install directory after every patch and store it on a different drive or on some other rewritable disk.

Keep in mind that currently available rewritable media, w/ the sole exception being BD (Blu-Ray), is just not enough to backup the whole directory. (HD DVD drive isn't out for PC market yet, is it? Just read-only ones.)

Currently, Japanese version of Playonline directory is taking up 7.83GB, almost as much as Dual-Layer DVD can take, and it will exceed the DL DVD capacity soon enough. Not to mention DL DVD media costs a lot more than Single-Layer ones, and ones for BD are even more expensive.

So, w/ near future in mind, that leaves 3 choices; 1. get BD drive for like $700, 2. use multiple DVD media (while having to deal w/ mutiple media is pain in the a$$, as losing either one of them pretty much means wasting them all), or 3. use separate hard disk, internal or external.

3. would be the most efficient way to do this, and if you can't add any more internal drives, or using a laptop, putting them on a different partition also helps.

[bungiefan]

Or if you have a decent DVD burning program, it can automatically split the FFXI folder between multiple DVD-RW discs. It shouldn't be any problem keeping the discs together if you are in the habit of keeping backups, and have been able to keep the original FFXI CDs together.

When you copy the split directory back, Windows will automatically merge the contents of folders with the same names, and so you will get the original directory back.

Heck, you don't even have to back up after every patch. Just every few months will do, as individual patches are usually fairly small. It's just that the big batch of patching after the initial install is so large, any sort of backup now will save you time in the future.

[Cybilcora]

someone said this of saving the patches

http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/871

I'll try it out at some point, sounds kinda tricky though.

[bungiefan]

Originally Posted by Cybilcora

someone said this of saving the patches
http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/871
I'll try it out at some point, sounds kinda tricky though.

There's a better way than that which doesn't require you to manually intercept the update in the middle. Windows XP (and supposedly 2000) has a data backup utility built into it. You can just tell it to back up all files and folders that have a modification date of after the original install. Then you will only back up the files that have been patched, because patching will change their modification dates. Then every time a new patch is released, you can just tell it to look for files modified since then. It should keep the folder structure intact, and when you copy the files back, it will merge them with the folders already there, giving you the original files that have never been updated, and the newest version of files that have.

That option removes the need to plan ahead or stop the update in the middle. It's also less of a hassle than what that article describes.

Still, the method I first described, backing up the full install folder, makes it so you only have to install the core game, and then when you copy the backup over the core game, it gives you all the expansions. The expansions don't require any additional registry keys to work.

[h0dg3s]

@bungiefan
Nowhere in the Windows XP backup utility does it let you specify what dates to backup after.

If you go to Find and set it to find .dat files withing your FFXI folder newer than 3/2/2004 you can archive them that way with the folder structure intact. (using winrar, screw winzip).
I would exclude version.dat though as that's related to the playonline viewer.

Has anybody tried this method? Does it work?