Not enough free disk space

[Markzone]

I've been trying to download a large game for months and no matter how much i have deleted unplayed games, it still says not enough free disk space. How do i fix this?

[Aluvard]

https://help.steampowered.com/faqs/view/6AD7-820D-8BE5-E51F

[pete]

Lil bro, u need the amount of space the game needs. Check ur harddrives space, check the space the game needs. and if you dont have enough then just delete more or buy a new drive.

[Markzone]

Originally posted by pete:

Lil bro, u need the amount of space the game needs. Check ur harddrives space, check the space the game needs. and if you dont have enough then just delete more or buy a new drive.

I know my guy. But i have deleted over 100 gigs worth of games. That is the total of the size of the game im downloading. After all that, i had 150 gigs free space left and it still tells me its not enough

[Iceira]

OP, you might be a new user in pc, you could have google this and learn there is so many post with this, you are already in trouble with under 200gb free space, and tahst for the OS , not even game installation.

Dont expect user will explan things like how OS work and pc anymore. its been done in 40 years and dont seem to help at all.

OS work best with 50% free space on boot disk

Rest of the drevs should have 200gb free space, this is know as performance issue on disk.
this is both SSD and spin disk drevs.

Your are not the first pc user and wont be the last.
its simple and the bigger games gat the more temporary storage spacew is need to install things.

And you have done a poor research on the subject, you can find 1000 of post with have 2-3 to 5 times freee space requirements, this is know from old ways 5times to 3 times a more moderate space, but many forget here what about , games +dlc +hightexture pack and event in top of this and game devs patched version, they was not inclueded in the original game storage info then it was made. ( its here the 5 times space could be required, + mods and save game thats now is even bigger, then original standalone game.

ppl will not explan you all this, its user own problem to have enough free space.
and dont think im hard on you, just wait to you see bigger games eat all the gigs, you claim should be enough, within a year or 2 maybe we talk about TERABYTE free space as minimum we are soone there then gamees hit 250gb installation thats 750gb to 1.25TB if you do the 3 to 5 range. it all depend on games + all the extra, we have seen colletion of games that dont explan this, to new pc users, and we are back at user most know and learn this themself.


its here we other say gigabyte what a joke soon, ( this is not ment at your issue but things to come. )

BGIII has already get alot of steam user in trouble, even support page says require alot more free space then needed. ( and they don't go into detail at all, why it is so. ) look more like not a game devs job to explan how pc works in process of data.

[ZanyScum]

- Make sure to empty your "Recycle Bin". It depends on how large that one is.

- You "can" try to disable fast boot. Fast boot makes your PC use hibernate when you shut it down instead of just shutting it down and it needs free space the size of your RAM. This should free that space if you have a lot of RAM. But FastBoot is nice. You would miss it.

- go to the folders of the games you uninstalled and make sure there are no left overs like mods or the like which often are not removed if you uninstall the game.

- Do you have a clean Windows installation or did you get it preinstalled? With lots of tools preinstalled too? Anti-Virus you don't use, demo versions of offices you don't use, lots of stuff you don't use? A fresh and clean Windows installation can help (and make you lose data you forgot to backup)

[Iceira]

Respect to ZanyScum for explan things, but time and size has change to try recover some free space, we all did this in the past, but today its to few gigs to recover unless he do had all files in garbage can, we get your point ZanyScum, but most pc user will not have 3 to 5 times free space with big games.

If we read OP issue he delete 100gig and he said he has 150gb free space. ( if i was OP i will buy new disk that bigger ) he is already on minimum OS recommended own old advice with % free , also the problem with MS % on a 10TB disk is overkill and we are back at 200GB on drevs is at minimum.

But lets see if you are right this is the problem and OP might have enough free space, but he still dont have OS bets recommended free space.

And OP what will you do if game update after install happend then you will still suffer from this.

[Ogami]

With how Steam downloads and installs work you need roughly twice the space of the recommended install size.
So iif a game says its 50 GB you need about 100 GB of free space to download and install it.
Thats because Steam uses a system where the downloaded files are unpacked and installed at the same time, so both the download size space and install size space are needed.
After the download is complete the temporary download files are deleted so you end with the final installation size. But during the download process you need more space.

Apart from that it was already mentioned that is never a good idea to completely fill up your drive.
Rule of thumb is that about 10% of the total disc space should be kept empty at all times so the system can easily shuffle files around. Anything fuller and the read/write times of the drive will go down heavily.

So as a example for a 1 TB SSD you should keep around 100GB permanently free.