Putting it in a separate thread would probably reduce the problem (more so on multi-core processors) but it won't eliminate it. My guess would be that the large amount of data being flushed to disk hinders the other file system IO operations being performed by the game. I can completely freeze my machine if I load 200MB of data into a FileStream class and then attempt to flush it to disk all in one go:
Code:
// buffer[] currently contains 200MB of data
FileStream fs = New FileStream("file.dat", FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Write);
fs.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
fs.Flush();
fs.Close();
fs.Dispose();
The way to do it would be the following code in a thread with priority set to BelowNormal:
Code:
// buffer[] currently contains 200MB of data
FileStream fs = New FileStream("file.dat", FileMode.OpenOrCreate, FileAccess.Write);
// Calculate the number of full 4096-byte blocks in the file.
int blockCount = (int)Math.Floor(buffer.Length / 4096);
// Write and flush each block to the drive.
for(int i = 0; i < blockCount; i++)
{
fs.Write(buffer, i * 4096, 4096);
fs.Flush();
// If you import System.Windows.Forms you can do this...
Application.DoEvents();
// Doing so will yield a reasonable amount of CPU time to other threads and applications.
}
// Flush the final (small) block if it isn't zero length.
if(buffer.Length % 4096 > 0) {
// The i variable should now be at the start of the final block
// That is, if I remember correctly. I'm tired.
fs.Write(buffer, i * 4096, buffer.Length % 4096);
fs.Flush();
}
fs.Close();
fs.Dispose();
The code may need some tweaking (like using object locking and delegates to prevent threading problems), but that's essentially it. The idea is that you flush each block separately, allowing the operating system's IO buffer to cope much more easily. Oh, and in case anyone is confused, the code is in C#.
