''Compress'' the entire Steam folder to save space? (SSD)

[Snofur]

First of all, I had trouble choosing a good subfolder so I am terrible sorry if I made a wrong pick by creating it here.


Now. I am having space problems at this moment and I'm woundering, I have this compress option on my SSD, and since Steam makes up the most of the GB's in my SSD I find it a worthy shot to compress the whole folder itself.

I am wondering if this is a good choice or bad choice, will I gain much on it, is it even good to do this on an SSD, will Steam corrupt ect...?



I know it will be time consuming and will perhaps or most likely slow the SSD down on that area of search atleast. But seeing as I have an SSD it cannot become that slow anyways.

SSD: Crucial M500 ≈1TB


Cheers.

[The Giving One]

You may be actually shooting a SSD in the foot when you do this, depending on your other hardware that is...

Saving space on small solid state drives. (Warning: Using compression will result in more writes to your solid state drive, potentially decreasing its life span. However, you may gain some more usable space.)

http://www.howtogeek.com/133264/how-to-use-ntfs-compression-and-when-you-might-want-to/

Am I reading that right ? You have a 1 TB SSD ??? Gonna ask the obvious here now please..

Why not back up any saves of games you have installed on it and uninstall some games you are not playing now. You cannot play every game at the same time so why won't that work ?

"Leave a portion of the disk empty. Check the specs for your drive, most manufacturers recommend keeping 10-20% of the drive empty. This empty space is there to assist the leveling algorithms (they redistribute the data across the NAND modules to minimize the total wear on the drive and ensure a long life and optimum drive performance). Too little space and the leveling algorithms work over time and prematurely wear on the drive."

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/45359/htg-explains-whats-a-solid-state-drive-and-what-do-i-need-to-know/

Also, there is a hardware and OS forum here that may be a better place for your topic.

[Snofur]

Thanks for the quick answers, I've actually not tough of backing up unused games for the moment. I have a spare HDD, but I really only use it for backups, and since they have very poor life I turn them off manually as in my mind it would spare it from further embaressment.

I have aprox 700gb used by Steam, and around 10-40gb left in total. I'm not sure if I do compress it if it decreases its life, will it be big deal? I will buy another one in the near future and according to their page, they say the drive got around 1.500.000 hours between each failure, now I don't know if this failure is a dead drive or just a data error thing where things go little to very corrupt.


For the most part I've usually uninstalled games that I don't play, but since my net is metered its quite a bad choice in the long run. I might get an urge to play a game but then it is uninstalled. And above 5GB is quite straining on the metered net.

I also see now that the other side of this page might aswell have been a better place to put it. Sorry if I put any moderator in pain.


I don't know exactly how long an SSD will last, but alot longer than an HDD because of no moving parts. Are we talking years? 1-5, 10-20, 50-100? How much would it be decreased if we/I allow some form of tearing? I'm planning on using a secondary SSD purely for Steam games and perhaps other games while the main for all the other **** beyond games. But as for now, I might be able to buy an equal sized SSD by christmas this year. So I really need to know if it's worth to save space by compressing it.

As now is the time to choose between a new MB & CPU vs a new SSD and MB.

[Nostromo]

For your less played games just move the entire game folders under SteamApps\common to another drive and use the "mklink /d [ink] [target" command to create a symlink to it (don't forget to use quotes around the paths if there are embedded spaces). That way you can still run them as per normal but you offload games you rarely play to cheaper, slower storage.

E.g. run 'cmd' & from the prompt type the following commands:

cd C:\Games\Steam\SteamApps\common
move xxxyyy d:\games
mklink -d xxxyyy "d:\games\xxxyyy"

(sorry my editing BB codes have stopped working for some F-ing reason hence the unformatted text above)

[Snofur]

Sorry for that odd comment. Here goes the second try...


Quite some brainwork you put me trough right there. If you could simplify it some maybe I don't have to break my brain before the days it up. :) ''xxxyyy'' stands for?

[The Giving One]

I can say this..if I spent the money that a 1 TB SSD costs, I would be babying that thing like crazy and not doing this that you want to do.

If I had no other real choice personally, I would copy and paste any saves I did not want to lose to another drive, and then "delete local content" from my Steam library for those games that I was going to uninstall.

Of course, later if you want to reinstall those games, that is more writes to the drive, and repeated reads and writes on a SSD is where the life gets slowly decreased for that SSD.

So the choice is yours, really. The speed of the drive can surely be affected, if you compress it, depending on your CPU for example. That was somewhat explained in one of the links I provided above.

Hope that helps you here and sorry for what I said above. This forum is about Steam and so is your topic in a way. I should have said "There is a hardware and OS forum here that can help you with hardware and OS questions, and how the actual SSD can be affected by compressing it."

[Nostromo]

xxxyyy is just the game folder name. You can name the link that you replace it with anything you like but I would leave it the same.

A specific example:

cd C:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common
move "Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition" D:\games
mklink -d "Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition" "D:\Games\Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition"

(you can do the 1st two steps with Explorer if it's easier)

[Snofur]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

I can say this..if I spent the money that a 1 TB SSD costs, I would be babying that thing like crazy and not doing this that you want to do.

If I had no other real choice personally, I would copy and paste any saves I did not want to lose to another drive, and then "delete local content" from my Steam library for those games that I was going to uninstall.

Of course, later if you want to reinstall those games, that is more writes to the drive, and repeated reads and writes on a SSD is where the life gets slowly decreased for that SSD.

So the choice is yours, really. The speed of the drive can surely be affected, if you compress it, depending on your CPU for example. That was somewhat explained in one of the links I provided above.

Hope that helps you here and sorry for what I said above. This forum is about Steam and so is your topic in a way. I should have said "There is a hardware and OS forum here that can help you with hardware and OS questions, and how the actual SSD can be affected by compressing it."

Yeah you make a good point, SSD's are not cheap.


My rig overall is quite capable so I don't think a loading problem is a big problem for me, the only problem is going to press the ''Apply'' button once the compress box is ticked as that might take alot of time to progress, once its over, the question stands, was it worth it, how much GB did I lose? because if I lose around 20gb I might aswell just drop the matter as its too little in my opinion, as a 50-100GB+ would be more worth it.

[Snofur]

Originally posted by Nostromo:

xxxyyy is just the game folder name. You can name the link that you replace it with anything you like but I would leave it the same.

A specific example:

cd C:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common
move "Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition" D:\games
mklink -d "Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition" "D:\Games\Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition"

(you can do the 1st two steps with Explorer if it's easier)

So the first two sentences are basically the stuff regarding moving them and the last 2 are regarding ''connecting'' them together somehow?



Edit(2): I don't really use CMD much so it gets hard. :)


But If I undersstand it right I can just aswell scratch the two first steps and do it manual then jump into the CMD console and do the last step. I think I catched on now.


Does the ''mklink -d'' automatically redirect it from the C drive, so it will connect it from the C to D drive or vice versa?

[The Giving One]

I have never done this in a SSD, but from my experience doing it on a HDD, you don't really get that much space. But you have 1 TB, but I could actually be wrong. The amount of space gained is proportional to the overall size of the drive as far as I know. Bigger drive equals more space gained if compressed but still, overall it is not "that" much of a gain.

I personally hardly ever see anyone compress any drive to gain space. Not saying it is not done, but I just don't see people do it that much. Maybe because it is not that great to do in order to get just a little space.

[Snofur]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

I have never done this in a SSD, but from my experience doing it on a HDD, you don't really get that much space. But you have 1 TB, but I could actually be wrong. The amount of space gained is proportional to the overall size of the drive as far as I know. Bigger drive equals more space gained if compressed but still, overall it is not "that" much of a gain.

I personally hardly ever see anyone compress any drive to gain space. Not saying it is not done, but I just don't see people do it that much. Maybe because it is not that great to do in order to get just a little space.

Yeah this was what I was thinking, but since my Steam folder takes up 60%+ of my drive I find it worthy to do it.

[The Giving One]

Just remember to leave some headroom on any drive and not fill it up all the way. One recommendation in one of the links I posted said about 10-20% headroom for a SSD. Just in case you were not sure. Good luck to you in what you decide to do.

[Snofur]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Just remember to leave some headroom on any drive and not fill it up all the way. One recommendation in one of the links I posted said about 10-20% headroom for a SSD. Just in case you were not sure. Good luck to you in what you decide to do.

Yep, I'll try to not blow the drive up hehe.


But yeah, it's now or never. Once the night creeps up, I will try to compress the whole Steam folder only and let it do its thing over the night, and I will check back if it made any differences, if not, ill just reverse it the next night.

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by Snoken:

Originally posted by Nostromo:

xxxyyy is just the game folder name. You can name the link that you replace it with anything you like but I would leave it the same.

A specific example:

cd C:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common
move "Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition" D:\games
mklink -d "Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition" "D:\Games\Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition"

(you can do the 1st two steps with Explorer if it's easier)

So the first two sentences are basically the stuff regarding moving them and the last 2 are regarding ''connecting'' them together somehow?



Edit(2): I don't really use CMD much so it gets hard. :)


But If I undersstand it right I can just aswell scratch the two first steps and do it manual then jump into the CMD console and do the last step. I think I catched on now.


Does the ''mklink -d'' automatically redirect it from the C drive, so it will connect it from the C to D drive or vice versa?

Correct, the last line is all you really need to do in the cmd command line. You will need to get into the common folder with the 1st command though, in order to put the link in the right place for Steam to work, but you could also make that shortcut anywhere on the C: drive & then move it with Explorer afterwards. You know how it is, there's always 9 ways to break anything in Windows! ;)

[Snofur]

Originally posted by Nostromo:

Originally posted by Snoken:

So the first two sentences are basically the stuff regarding moving them and the last 2 are regarding ''connecting'' them together somehow?



Edit(2): I don't really use CMD much so it gets hard. :)


But If I undersstand it right I can just aswell scratch the two first steps and do it manual then jump into the CMD console and do the last step. I think I catched on now.


Does the ''mklink -d'' automatically redirect it from the C drive, so it will connect it from the C to D drive or vice versa?

Correct, the last line is all you really need to do in the cmd command line. You will need to get into the common folder with the 1st command though, in order to put the link in the right place for Steam to work, but you could also make that shortcut anywhere on the C: drive & then move it with Explorer afterwards. You know how it is, there's always 9 ways to break anything in Windows! ;)

Haha, yeah, and then it's no going back lol. I'll probably not use this command anyways... :)

[Snofur]

So since last night I put it on compressing, I woke up today and noticed the GB's gone from 20-30 up to 150 GB, which is alot of improvement to me.


Now if this will last I don't know. I still really don't know if this can corrupt stuff. I will check it out and if something seems odd I might have to find a solution myself or just un-compress it again.

So far so good though.


Edit: I put the PC trough some sweaty work to make it figure out the size. It comes up with 663GB size, and 548GB size on disk. 100GB+ :D