wimlib compression performance and speed

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wimlib - Compression

wimlib.net
If you don't already use wimlib, it achieves faster and better compatible compression than the microsoft equivalent.
because it's open source, it's also open to improvement and multithreading tweaks to take advantage of resources.
On average it seems to take half the time to do the same amount of work, which would really be an amazing improvement.
apparently it can also achieve better compression.. which would be amazing.
 
Hi,

for ESD compression I do use wimlib, more info in \NTLite\Tools\wimlib
But for WIM handling, just Windows internal APIs for compatibility purpose, and because it's already mounted for edit with it.
wimlib doesn't support mounting.

Thanks for the feedback. If you have a wish for some extra WIM handling, I'm listening.
 
ntlite truly is the most powerful system.

yea i was looking into my other issues mounting wims. GimageX apparently can mount them faster, but it's a standalone closed source application.
 
is it hypothetically possible to make boot.wim into an esd?
I can compress it into an esd, but i bet something extras needed to give the boot manager the chooch needed to load that.
 
olivered said:
yea i was looking into my other issues mounting wims. GimageX apparently can mount them faster, but it's a standalone closed source application.
Click to expand...
Really? Maybe it's like NTLite - File - Settings and disable Verify files before the mount, that should speed it up.
Also disable or whitelist any antiviruses in the background.
There is one crazy fast mount method which actually delays loading files until accessed, but wasn't stable when I tried it - required some special trigger on a file or something, wasn't worth it as the normal mount (plus without verify) is quite fast as is.
It's just dependent on the CPU single core speed, not disks.

olivered said:
is it hypothetically possible to make boot.wim into an esd?
I can compress it into an esd, but i bet something extras needed to give the boot manager the chooch needed to load that.
Click to expand...
I think it's not possible unless MS makes a bootloader which would do it early before starting files from boot.wim, which is not likely due to small ESD gains that can be had on a small image like boot.wim.
 
I have a highly customized win10 laptop with no antivirus or filters that would delay loading of image.
But it does have a weak CPU.

Boot.WIM if fully customized and with future optimizations to cut SYSWOW64 and other cruft can get quite small. WINDOWS 7 Embedded IBW X64 boot.wim is only 175mb: off the iso!
I was able to shrink it with NTLite to 112MB. While it was unable to be customized by replacing the installer with a newer /support/ folder, that was due to generalized 8/10 installer versions having additional dependencies that I could not figure out, including win32.
ESD format is equivalent to Solid Archive WIM apparently and could possibly be used for boot.wim as long as the .wim file extension is retained or file renamed, but i have not tested this theory yet.
With some work boot.wim could be under 100mb on most customized iso’s.

Combine that with excitingly small INSTALL.esd(my current 10 LSTC install.esd weighs in at only 1.7gb) and powerusers can get closer and closer to windows editions that can indeed fit on a cdrom.
Not that any of us have cd drives, but the smaller the install the faster the install and the faster the boot.
 
Thanks.
Tried now boot.esd (renamed to boot.wim), did not work on 1903 out of the box (error winload.exe 0xc0000225), maybe it requires some more changes or special ESD parameters.
Let me know if you stumble on it.
 
olivered said:
www.tenforums.com

ESD to ISO - Create Bootable ISO from Windows 10 ESD File

How to Create Bootable ISO from Windows 10 install.esd File
www.tenforums.com www.tenforums.com
Apparently there are some people using boot.esd file with custom BCD store changes
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info, BCD editing is a bit outside of the tool's scope for now, but if users see it working I can unlock easy boot.wim->esd compressing, currently it's locked from the UI for clarity of use.
 
Would ESD/WIM OS installation matter in terms of speed ? (install.esd/wim)
I searched, but no approved answer or tested results. I assume WIM is faster as it's less compressed, I have only this logical answer to myself, Anyone have experience would like to share it with us ?

Thanks in advance,
 
there probably is a difference but it may not be big enough to worry about, seconds to 1 minute difference maybe, if that. use whatever compression is applicable and move on to the bigger fish.
 
What Clanger said, and if your storage is slow (e.g. USB sticks), ESD might even be faster with newer CPUs, as there is less to read from.
But I haven't tested that claim, could be ESD's compression is so demanding to outweigh the less_to_read benefits, nor I use ESD unless the size of WIM would be >4GB (FAT32 limit).
This is purely as I do a lot of those, so waiting on ESD compression is annoying.
 
nuhi said:
nor I use ESD unless the size of WIM would be >4GB (FAT32 limit).
Click to expand...
or 4.3gb for a dvd. i have had some very fast install times with sandisk cruzer usb2(slow read/write times) keys in a usb2 port.
if you disabble things like pagefile prefetch superfetch search/indexing defender and use an answer file that can really speed things up.

i dont sit and clock watch, get setup going, have a wee n make tea and by the time you are done you're at the desktop.
 
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