Is it just me or is NTLite getting slower and slower?

[Sonicmojo]

What's your average time to build an ISO?

Or maybe better, what can I do to speed up NTLite processing? Or "What's the bottleneck?" It takes my computer about 25 minutes to trim a Win7. And that's starting with a trimmed iso, with only one edition, with updates already applied. I know that there are too many variables to get a good...

www.ntlite.com

Thanks for this - but it's dated and did not really expose any weaknesses in the process. Maybe this just is what it is and I will need to accept it.

And - remember that this is something I do not do very often (annually) - my inquiry was more about best practices and ensuring I have NT Lite setup correctly (and in an optimum way) vs doing a shootout with hardware.

My testing has shown that regardless of whether it's a 2014-era 4 core or a 2021 8 core CPU - NT Lite still takes it's time doing what its doing.

S

 

[garlin]

CPU core count is irrelevant. Image processing is a predominantly serialized disk operation, with thousands of files traversed in a short time period.

Faster disk, faster disk controller, extra RAM for Windows disk caching, and no real-time scanning of files make the most performance gains.

 

[nuhi]

Now - just so I am clear - are you guys talking it takes like approx 2 minutes to do something like this - end to end?:

View attachment 10859

The step in here that kills my machine is the Optimize Image File Structure step - this alone can take 6-7 minutes here.

I am going to leave my current install alone and reinstall the app on my own workstation, accept the defaults and see what happens.

Will be back.

S

The 1-2 minutes range was for the Reg file integration + saving of the image only.
Post #3 above states to take 10 minutes for that operation, I'm waiting that log to see where it got stuck.

Integration of updates is the slowest one, especially if a big cumulative update is there.
Removals depend, some are fast, some are a bit slower, but update integration is the slowest.
It's still faster than installing updates after Windows, if on the same machine.

 

[Sonicmojo]

The 1-2 minutes range was for the Reg file integration + saving of the image only.
Post #3 above states to take 10 minutes for that operation, I'm waiting that log to see where it got stuck.

Log attached from this most recent build moments ago:



And this timing



Sonic

 

[nuhi]

OK, thanks.
That's not too bad, but still it can be improved.

Since the other editions were saved as well, you could shave off ~3min by trimming the unnecessary editions.
This is so that Exporting goes faster, it doesn't need to resave those unused editions.

If using only one edition from that image, the loaded one, then on the Apply page choose "Save the image and trim editions".
You can also selectively remove unnecessary editions on the Apply page, using the Save changes + Remove nonessential editions.

Let me know with the new log if you try that.

 

[Sonicmojo]

Since the other editions were saved as well, you could shave off ~3min by trimming the unnecessary editions.
This is so that Exporting goes faster, it doesn't need to resave those unused editions.

Interesting - will give this a go

Let me know with the new log if you try that.

And will post up a new log as well - once I have tested a new build.

 

[garlin]

Since the other editions were saved as well, you could shave off ~3min by trimming the unnecessary editions.
This is so that Exporting goes faster, it doesn't need to resave those unused editions.

If using only one edition from that image, the loaded one, then on the Apply page choose "Save the image and trim editions".
You can also selectively remove unnecessary editions on the Apply page, using the Save changes + Remove nonessential editions.

I find NTLite works faster if you first export a single image to WIM, versus trimming the unwanted editions on the back-end.

1. Add the image folder, but don't load any image. Select the single edition you want to keep, and right-menu Export -> WIM.
2. Replace the sources folder's install.wim with your exported file.
3. Forgot this image folder. Now add it again.

My feeling is wimlib runs faster when it doesn't have to keep track of unused editions while doing its work.