Why is my ARK taking up 270GB of space?

[xXMagnusXx]

I seem to have like.. multiple copies of the game files installed somehow. 123GB in the "Content" folder and 147GB under the "SeekFreeContent" folder in the ARK/ShooterGame directory. Mods folder under "Content" is 14GB. Mods folder under "SeekFreeContent" is 30GB.

So I don't see how I could possibly hit 270GB unless I have base game resources duplicated somehow. Do I like... Have developer tools installed or something? There's no way this can be right. I have to have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ something up somewhere right?

I just reinstalled the whole game yesterday after like 2 years of not playing. And when I uninstalled it last time, I uninstalled it through steam, then deleted all the leftover files from my HDD. On top of that, since then I've begun using a completely different steam library folder on a separate SSD. When I hit the install button yesterday, it was starting from zero, guaranteed. So this 270GB was auto installed somehow, and I have no idea where it's coming from.

I post this because I was talking about it when my friend got me to reinstall it yesterday, and I mentioned the near 300GB file size, and he swore up and down that I was crazy because his install was like 100 despite owning the same DLC I do, minus the mods probably. Though he didn't do an actual file count in windows. So which one of us is the crazy one? And if it's me, how do I fix it?

[Lordbufu]

Even the base install without DLC's is now around 170GB somewhere, uncompressed.
If you want to save space, manage your owned DLC's, and uncheck anything your not expecting to play. Or look into compressing files if you have a CPU that is powerful enough to not make it a performance impact.

[Vesuvius]

only download the DLC's that you wish to play? i have 45gig of mods ... 85gig of DLC and my Ark install is 250gig

Ark with all DLC and no modsi s ~300gig

You cannot delete the seekfreecontent folder anymore (used to be able to).. but it will only break and repopulate after you verify your game to fix it.... its what the game uses when you play online.

[G4M5T3R]

https://github.com/ImminentFate/CompactGUI
Compress it, it'll cut the footprint in half.

[xXMagnusXx]

Okay so I'm NOT crazy. My friend is just a dumbass that doesn't know how to check the data on his HDD.

[The Nameless]

Yeahhh, ARK is just effing huge. I think it may well be the single biggest hard-drive-eating game I ever saw.

[Ancient]

Why is explained here:

Survivor IGNWhyt asks, “Will you please address the issue where the game takes up 100+GB? Is this intended? Are there any plans on reducing the size?”

Quote
It’s intended. In essence, much of the content exists in two forms: seekfree (for fast-loading of the basic game), and non-seekfree for support of Mods and Total Conversion to use individual assets. That said, there is a strong argument the non-seekfree files necessary for Mods should be contained in an optional “Mod Support” DLC pack, and not part of the immediate base game. Will consider this in the days ahead.

- Source[survivetheark.com]

So yeah, the game is essentially comprised of two duplicate copies of the game assets: Content is loose, compressed copies needed for mod and TC support and is required and SeekFree is the standard uncompressed archives needed to keep I/O latency low. That's why using mods makes the game load slower and more and more mods (that require more and more real-time decompression of more and more compressed assets in the Content folder) make the game load progressively slower.

Neither part is optional (even if you don't use mods), so ARK is just a disk space hog and there will likely never be any kind of push to address that. This forum has been full of complaints about it since 2016 and I'm sure you realize that precisely zero has been done about it, dating back to when 100+GB was "big" or "significant". Their idea of optimizing the game is to ignore the problems so long that the RTX 4080Ti and 4TB+ NVMe SSDs become standard so that you can finally brute force the game to run at 4K/Epic/60 FPS and not care that it takes up half a TB in premium disk space to actually keep it installed with all the optional maps, your chosen mods and all of their DLCs.

If you love the game, the demands are worth it. That's why ARK has been such a success. If it's not going to dominate your playtime and be your primary game that is more than worth the abnormally high hardware demands and extraordinary disk space requirements, well... it's not a good game to try and dabble in. You either need to be balls deep and not care about how badly it runs or how much space it takes up or just move along because it would be tough for the average gamer to have both ARK and a full collection of current gen games, just due to the sheer size requirements. I have over 40TB of storage in my primary gaming rig, so I don't care, but I realize that is about 36-38TB above average, especially when budget and laptop builds are considered.

[𝔇ave]

Originally posted by Ancient:

You either need to be balls deep and not care about how badly it runs or how much space it takes up or just move along .

I gave you an award for this as it pretty much sums it up

[Ancient]

Originally posted by 𝔇ave:

Originally posted by Ancient:

You either need to be balls deep and not care about how badly it runs or how much space it takes up or just move along .

I gave you an award for this as it pretty much sums it up

Thanks.

Though I think it's also fair to give credit to G4M5T3R for the shout out of CompactGUI.

That is also a very fair and intelligent answer to the game's size issues. The file sizes are only big because UE4's compression algorithm, at least the old one still used for ARK's UE4 version is borderline-trash.

I was late to suggest it, but I also suggest using Win 10's compact.exe too, and CompactGUI or CompactGUI 2 are merely front ends for that commandline W10 executable we've all had access to since something like Windows 10 v 1607 or so (I can't remember correctly when it got it's tie-in and can't be arsed to look it up on what is my night off). But, more or less, so long as the files will stay in the same folder tree location on the same drive (which is what makes this an "in-place" compression), you can use it to reduce the size on disk of basically every game, app, etc.

XPRESS8K and XPRESS16K are amazing compression algorithms.

I would not use either on things like valuable Word docs or valuable, cherished PSDs you intend to keep for the duration. Nor things like 3DS, MAX, OBJ, FBX or many other working files that you might assign personal or professional value to... even though the XPRESS8K and XPRESS16K compression algos are quite safe... They're almost just always going to feel too good to be true to the older of us because they are that good at doing what they do, and so I tend to still practice standard file safety redundance for my working files that I require security for.

But for what is essentially copy trash like a Steam game install (it's trash in that you don't really ever require redundant backups because you can always just re-download the source from Steam again). For that kind of install there's no need to avoid compression algorithms or other possibly questionable methods and XPRESS16K is one of the best we've ever seen implemented since LZMA and it's soooo much faster in terms of CPU time needed for decompression.

There's basically no downside to using it if you have a 4c or better CPU and all it can do is make slower drives more access friendly (i.e do you think a 100GB game cache or a 270GB game cache would load faster?)

Well, if the folder has been XPRESS16K compressed to get it down to 100-150GB or so vs a 270+GB game cache, every file system is going to handle it better than it could the 40% larger (size on disk) 270GB game cache. The only caveat is that you must have a modern 4-core CPU and 1-4% free utilization on that CPU to make the compression work in such a way that it is an advantage.