Why do I have to download 120gb for a 2gb update?

[OffbeatMuffin]

This is pathetic I literally just downloaded 2k last night. There is a 2gb patch today and steam is telling me I need 120gb (the entire size of the game) worth of file space to do the 2gb update.

What is the way to avoid this because if this is the case I'm off steam for good, so pathetic.

[Satoru]

Opprinnelig skrevet av OffbeatMuffin:

So what you're telling me is for every single game I have I need to have double to disk space that the game requires just to do an update? Yea definitely flawed and not going to work.

Because as of now I paid for a game, had enough room for it, but now I don't have enough room to patch 2gb.... Seems legit.

No it depends on the game. It depends on what is being updated and what game files need to be updated. You can either

1) Download a small patch and have disk space to patch the large files

2) download the entire file from scratch instead

Most modern systems use #1 now. This is because disk space locally is generally not a problem while bandwidth is a limited and expensive resource.

Games like Payday2 due to their game engine require the entire game to be patched due to the way the assets are distributed via the Diesel engine. Other games like older UE3/UE4 games used to package the entire game into a single file. This was done to improve read times back when FAT32 was more common in Windows 7 days. In modern OS that are on NTFS and with SSD, the benefits of having a single file are outweighed by the time to patch as well as the lack of benefits as modern windows also defragments your drive in the background.

[rawWwRrr]

Opprinnelig skrevet av OffbeatMuffin:

Opprinnelig skrevet av J4MESOX4D:

Yes. If the update needs a total fresh write of the file architecture then it'll need the space in reserve to re-write. It's not flawed when it's working as intended. If you have a fast drive and decent internet speeds, a 2gb download and a full write should take less than 15 minutes.

So the problem here is that steam client tells me i need 150gb for this game that I purchase. All of a sudden i need 300gb? This is clearly flawed. If this is intended then it's an obvious scam. If they know for a fact that this is how the updates work then that needs to be put forward before the consumer purchases the product. I didn't get a popup before they took all my money saying "make sure you have double the disk space we say, otherwise you cant play this".

Often users look at a hard drive as a bucket they can fill to the top, not realizing that they need to maintain enough free space to allow for routine operations.

If you're finding yourself out of space to allow for an update to process, then you're not managing your disk space appropriately.

[Satoru]

Opprinnelig skrevet av rawWwRrr:

Opprinnelig skrevet av OffbeatMuffin:

So the problem here is that steam client tells me i need 150gb for this game that I purchase. All of a sudden i need 300gb? This is clearly flawed. If this is intended then it's an obvious scam. If they know for a fact that this is how the updates work then that needs to be put forward before the consumer purchases the product. I didn't get a popup before they took all my money saying "make sure you have double the disk space we say, otherwise you cant play this".

Often users look at a hard drive as a bucket they can fill to the top, not realizing that they need to maintain enough free space to allow for routine operations.

If you're finding yourself out of space to allow for an update to process, then you're not managing your disk space appropriately.

Note with modern NTFS and modern windows the actual issues with filling up a drive, even an OS drive aren't nearly as bad as they used to be. I've seen Windows server fill up on the C:\ with 0% disk space and the server actually is fine. Like yes you get alerts but the system still runs, you can still log into the system and begin wiping out temp files. We also no longer see the sort of 'death march' of disk performance issues as you start getting to 5-10% disk free.

Managing disk space is still important, but its no longer the case where if you didnt run disk cleanup every other week a system would fall over and die. You'd probably be hard pressed to even know a system had only 5% free on it unless you were actively looking at it, where as before 5% free was very obvious from overall system performance.

[nullable]

I would agree. And in a few instances I've seen Windows 7 at 0% disk space and was still fine, of course needed to free up space. (Although it was some kind of issue where some update IT did filled the developer systems OS drives up with log files until they ran out of space, easy to remedy).

The wife had her C: at 99% (2TB NVMe) full at one point on Windows 11, she doesn't monitor her space quite as seriously as one might prefer, but it didn't affect her usage and I just happened to notice it with an unrelated issue/question she had. The kicker is she has 3x 2TB SSDs but wasn't using one at all, so again easy to address.

Of course you want some free space for the pure utility of it. But running out of space on modern Windows is just an annoyance, not a serious/harmful problem in most cases. Freeing up space will resolve it easy enough.

[rawWwRrr]

Routine game updates can't take place with drives that are filled to capacity. Those drives will require the user to maintain enough overhead to allow the update process to commence.

[nullable]

Well yes of course you need enough space to do X. If a process fails due to lack of space freeing up some space is easy enough for most users. There's bound to be lots of GB's that don't really need to persist.

[Satoru]

Opprinnelig skrevet av rawWwRrr:

Routine game updates can't take place with drives that are filled to capacity. Those drives will require the user to maintain enough overhead to allow the update process to commence.

Note my post was more to outline that low disk space in a modern OS is now more of a 'minor inconvenience'. Where as the XP/Windows7 days it was "your system is absolutely going to die please stop downloading all thes Real Media videos"

[rawWwRrr]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Satoru:

Opprinnelig skrevet av rawWwRrr:

Routine game updates can't take place with drives that are filled to capacity. Those drives will require the user to maintain enough overhead to allow the update process to commence.

Note my post was more to outline that low disk space in a modern OS is now more of a 'minor inconvenience'. Where as the XP/Windows7 days it was "your system is absolutely going to die please stop downloading all thes Real Media videos"

I'm aware.

It's better for the end users to develop better habits, though. With today's handheld devices with segregated partitions, it's easy to max out their available space with media and not encounter anything more than that. No space on the device but regular updates come through unimpeded, they make the same assumption to a PC and suddenly can't understand why it's not the same.

We all know what the problem is and how to work around it. Just need to get the general public to see it as well.

[Nx Machina]

Opprinnelig skrevet av OffbeatMuffin:

Here's the thing, you can say personally I do this or if you understand how this works as much as you want. I'm a customer buying a product that has listed specs necessary. The game clearly takes more then those specs to be able to actually play. End of story. No matter how it does the patching if I have 120gb game and only 110gb free space on drive the update will not happen and that is not listed ANYWHERE before purchasing a game. The specs say 150 gb I have more then that.

I have being using Steam for 20+ years and seen all the changes. I understand how patching works because i have seen it numerous times and i even gave you an example:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Nx Machina:

The number you see on the left hand side under the game picture is the data to be patched of the game install. When you look at the download and disk activity in the top right the download size is usually a lot smaller.

For example Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms is 13.85gb installed. The number under the game picture was 2.3gb to be patched of the game install. The download size was 275mb.

Edit: Another example which i had posted about previously.

Opprinnelig skrevet av Nx Machina:

You are being shown on the left hand side the data to be patched within the game install.

Example: Total War Warhammer 3.

Data to be patched 17.9gb - download size/patch size 253.1mb.

Game install size is: 113 gb.

[76561198407601200]

Opprinnelig skrevet av OffbeatMuffin:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Nx Machina:

It is not flawed if you understand how it works.

Game install > download > processing.

3 seperate areas.

The files after being processed are written into the game install and those files are scattered throughout the game install.

Download and processing are freed up once complete giving you back the free space on your drive.

I personally leave x3 the space for the largest game installed and have zero issue.

I also explained in post #2 what you are seeing. If you start the download you will see it is not downloading 120gb.

Would you prefer the game to delta patch which is what is happening or for the game to be uninstalled and fully redownloaded every single time?

Here's the thing, you can say personally I do this or if you understand how this works as much as you want. I'm a customer buying a product that has listed specs necessary. The game clearly takes more then those specs to be able to actually play. End of story. No matter how it does the patching if I have 120gb game and only 110gb free space on drive the update will not happen and that is not listed ANYWHERE before purchasing a game. The specs say 150 gb I have more then that.

You download a 5mb zip file that contains files that you need, but is taking 5mb of space on your drive. You extract the contents 5mb but the zip file still remains of 5mb, so 10 mb is now used on your drive. Same concept except the extra things needed are removed, and this is happening with a 120gb game instead of a 5mb zip file. The fact of the matter is if the specs state 120gb is required for install, that is what is required for install, not updates.