Temporary Files?

[LordQulex]

This has been plaguing me for years now. I have my Steam library installed on a 1TB external HDD. I remember buying it years ago thinking, "I'll never need to buy another hard drive as long as I live!" HA!

Now, I've got some whales installed for sure: Killing Floor 2 76GB, Sea of Thieves 68GB, Dead by Daylight 50G, just to name a few. But for the most part the games are <10GB, and over half <1GB (as per WinDirStat). So you can imagine how frustrated I am that every time I try to update a game, I need to clear space on my HDD. I routinely have <1GB, sometimes <200MB free so the games fail to install. The worst part is they fill the HDD with partial downloads, so I have to cancel one to free up space to finish another and restart the first.

But as a software developer, my gut tells me games don't grow at this rate. Sure if new sounds or new models are added you may get a new PAK, but updates shouldn't add dozens of GB to a game, right?? I would bet money that some of these games have temporary installation files they fail to delete after updating a game—MSI files can get big.

Does anyone know a good way to identify, find, and delete temporary/unused files in the steam library to free up hard drive space? Thanks!

[Iceira]

Buy another disk, stop have games installed you dont play.

dump at NAS server, i bet you have such.


ps.
i dont think you need help with games like Dead by Daylight 50G
or other games like fallout4 + dlc is apox 93gb

it was 10 year ago games was 25gb and they was seen as big. ( dlc and mod dont make it better in size )

[Mad Scientist]

If you have a problem with partial downloads; let those fully update, and watch as all that temporary download space is suddenly free.

Keep in mind; different games update differently and have different architectures. Some update types require downloading from 0% to 100%, rather than a set amount patching to the files it needs to.

Finish the downloads, in some cases I managed to get 100GB of disk space back just by finishing updates. Any failure just requires you do so again (overwriting anything present), and again - if you finish them, the space will clear.

[my new friend]

Some games update large, multiple GB files when a small 500MB patch is rolled out. You'll need the extra space to patch the large files. You should never get below 10% free space on your drive anyways.

Originally posted by |<- Iceira ->|:

Buy another disk, stop have games installed you dont play.

Agreed.

[LordQulex]

Originally posted by Mr. Gentlebot:

If you have a problem with partial downloads; let those fully update, and watch as all that temporary download space is suddenly free.

Nailed it:

.\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\Downloading\ has 20+ GB directories with partial, "insufficient disk space" errors.

So yes, when one fails to download due to not enough disk space, it doesn't delete the files. They stay in an incomplete state eating up disk space until forever. Yay.

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by LordQulex:

Originally posted by Mr. Gentlebot:

If you have a problem with partial downloads; let those fully update, and watch as all that temporary download space is suddenly free.

Nailed it:

.\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\Downloading\ has 20+ GB directories with partial, "insufficient disk space" errors.

So yes, when one fails to download due to not enough disk space, it doesn't delete the files. They stay in an incomplete state eating up disk space until forever. Yay.

Then finish them or delete them. Preferably finish them, and use todays update for the Steam client which resolves some Disk-Write errors.

[LordQulex]

Originally posted by my new friend:

Some games update large, multiple GB files when a small 500MB patch is rolled out. You'll need the extra space to patch the large files. You should never get below 10% free space on your drive anyways.

Yep.

[Borjini Porrini]

nice tips

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

If storage a problem invest getting another storage drive.

Can either get HDD which normally like $40+ for 1TB, or SSD 1TB for $80+. HDD are normally cheapest option for storage, and games that don't have long loading times, could get 4TB HDD for around $100+ which SSD that 4TB can be 3x of that price, or more.