Speeding Up Load Time

I was poking around recently and stumbled onto this thread discussing ways to speed up Sims 2 load time when you have a lot of custom content in your Downloads folder.

Have any of you tried any of these things? If so, what do you think? I don't know what CCleaner is. If it's something on my computer, it's called something else or I don't know where to find it.

Does anyone use The Compressorizer? I never have, though I've heard of it.

I decided to try moving certain CC outside of the Downloads folder and directly into my The Sims 2 folder in my Isle of Demeter hood. I backed it up first. Moving the walls, floors, and terrains (a total of 184 MB) decreased my load time by 3 minutes! On the other hand, moving (so far) 2.4 GB of recolors only decreased my load time by an additional one minute. I'm not sure that's worth the time it took to move it! On the other hand, it's a mere fraction of the recolors I probably still have in my Downloads folder. I also found that, the first time I boot up the game after moving a bunch of recolors, it takes longer to load the game. After that first time is when I see the improvement. I saw the improvement immediately after moving the walls, floors, and terrains. They must take a lot longer to load than recolors do.

Because I can't help myself, I still ended up with a number of subfolders within subfolders for everything, and I haven't had any items or recolors disappear from my catalog or from the collections I've created. So far, so good.  

I have in my Downloads Folder, 23 Folders (only 1 folder has 2 sub folders) containing 6,551 package files and 11,786 un-organised package files.

Using SATA II with a an SSD containing my Downloads Folder and a normal HDD containing my Games Folder, Sims 2 loads in 4.5 minutes.

Using SATA III with a an SSD containing my Downloads Folder and a SSD containing my Games Folder, Sims 2 loads in 3 minutes.

My game takes about 9 minutes to load these days, but I have a lot of stuff in it, including default replacements and mods. It's still much better than the 25+ minutes my old computer took, and I had a lot less custom content in it. I don't even mind the 9 minutes, but I know myself, and I won't stop adding more content to my game.

I might have a nervous breakdown if I had uncategorized files.

I've noticed if I turn off the anti-virus first, it runs a bit faster...other then that, I haven't really tried messing with anything to speed it up.

This is the first time I've messed with things that might improve load time, just because I found the thread while looking for something else. I thought I'd try moving the files because it seems harmless enough -- they can be put back easily. I'd say if you have a lot of walls and floors, it does make a significant difference in load time. Recolors, not so much.