How to reduce processor load?

Question

My book is getting big, 200+ pages with lots of drawings, etc.  It is eating up a lot of processor power and running slowly.  What are some things I can do to reduce the load?  Is there some way to freeze a range of pages?

Answer 1

WestB2012 wrote:
Hi Peter, I have Windows managing the virtual memory.  I have 7+GB free on my drive and I recently defragged.
I ended up just resaving under a different name and deleting all but the chapters I was working on, which is working better.
However, when I import it back, I will have problems with the delay again.
Saving a file to a new name relieves most applications of the effort and memory needs to track changes to the file; the normal save process usually emulates what you might do on paper - circle content that's moved and draw a line to the new location, mark content to delete, write in the margins and mark with insertion carats, for new material. Save as does all those tasks, cleaning up the file internally, so there's less work to do. New saves starts the process over.
2GB RAM is marginal - parts of running applications, and current content in those applications is temporarily stored in RAM, if there's enough, or in virtual memory (really written to disk). It's faster to store and retrieve completely or mostly in RAM; the less virtual memory (disk) used, the faster. Also, with virtual memory, the faster the disk drive (7200, or 10,000, or 15,000 RPM, vs. 5200 (the most common in older and low-end systems), the faster virtual memory processing will be.
Working with large amounts of material in individual files and managing them with the InDesign book feature reduces the processing load, because you only have a few moderate-sized files open, not the whole humongous file.
7GB once was considered "lots of space." When I bought an expensive box of ten single-sided 5.25' floppies, each able to store 85KB, with my first computer, I thought I'd never need any more back-up storage. When I moved to an affordable (~$400) HUGE 20MB hard drive after a couple of years, I had hundreds of floppies, many of which I had "notched" to make them able to convince the disk drives that they were double-sided disks that could be inserted in the single-sided drive with one or the other side up, to gain double capacity.
The point here is that in your 7GB of free space, you need to store the virtual memory, and any data that the application normally writes temporarily to disk in order to perform its tasks, and any temporary storage that Windows needs as well. Perhaps 2x, 3x, or more times the total size of all active files in the active application is needed. Unlike Photoshop, Illustrator, and other applications, InDesign doesn't offer the ability to specify a separate "scratch disk," on which to do this background work; in a sense, it's like a multiple processor CPU, in that it divides the work. Without a scratch disk, the single drive has to alternate between storing and retrieving material - store, retrieve, store, retrieve, etc. IOW, SLOW. It would be a great feature enhancement request; you can enter it formally at Adobe - Feature Request/Bug Report Form.
HTH
Regards,
Peter
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices