Question about SSD storage space being near full.

[Kross Mayne]

My gaming notebook has 128 gb SSD (I know I need more) and Black Ops 3 is taking up most of the storage space. Recently my notebook started displaying a pop-up saying that the SSD is near max capacity and I should free up some space because having a fully loaded SSD can shorten the lifespan of it. My question is....is that true? Should I put BO3 on my HDD? According to my computer I have 91.1/117 GB (25.9 GB free) on my SSD. I would like to not have to reinstall BO3 on my HDD because my internet speed is HORRIBLE and I'm in the process of figuring out why I'm at 10% of the DL speed I should be at, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Any info would be appreciated, thank you kindly.

[SundownKid]

Yes, a nearly loaded SSD can mess it up. Use Steam Mover to get your steam games out of there, or use CCleaner to clean up some space, etc.

[MorbidTorture]

I'd imagine you're still in good shape. Some will say to leave 20% free while some will say to use it till its full. It's all about you. If it's still performing well, then keep doing what you're doing. But with 25GB free out of the available 117GB I'd say you're good.

[Air]

Originally posted by MorbidTorture:

while some will say to use it till its full.

That's never a good idea when it comes to a drive that an OS is on. You need room for temporary files, otherwise things will be exremely slow or won't even work properly.

[Kross Mayne]

Originally posted by SundownKid:

Yes, a nearly loaded SSD can mess it up. Use Steam Mover to get your steam games out of there, or use CCleaner to clean up some space, etc.

I just fox'd steam mover and it looks like a 3rd party software and not an actual steam function? Does this program work or will there still be problems with the registry?

Originally posted by MorbidTorture:

But with 25GB free out of the available 117GB I'd say you're good.

Originally posted by Air🐺:

You need room for temporary files, otherwise things will be exremely slow or won't even work properly.

Having room for temp files and for the OS to "move around" makes sense, I think 25 GB should be enough for this, right? I'm looking into the cost for upgrading the SSD. Having 1 out of 2 SSD cards loaded isn't the same as having just one loaded, right?

(For the same reason as mentioned above, space for the OS?)

[Black Mambo № 5]

In case you're looking for upgrading options, I'd suggest getting a 480/500GB SSD, that should be plenty. Costly, yes, but should be more than enough for a Laptop.
I have a total of 128+250+250(OS+Steam+Steam) in SSDs, and even that is way too much for me considering another 1TB(500+500) in WD Black HDDs.

Also what I can suggest is that if you're not comfortable you don't need to use any 3rd Party software to move your games around. Here's what I do if I want to move things around:
-- Make a copy of your BOps3 directory(typically: C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\Common\<GameName>)
-- Then paste it in another drive(provided you have enough space).
-- Run Steam and select "Delete Local Content" by right-clicking on the game whose files you just copied.
-- Next Find that game again and select "Install".
-- Under the Install window, select a different location, preferably a drive that has ample space.
-- Once Steam is set and starts downloading the game, just pause it, delete the local content again and exit Steam.
-- Copy/Cut paste the game folder you just backed up in the new Steam Library location(eg: D:\SteamLibrary\SteamApps\Common\).
-- Load up Steam and find the game you want to install, make sure to change the download/install location to your new drive.
-- Give it a couple of minutes and Steam should auto detect all the files and verify them.
-- If everything was done right, your game will be ready to play, if not, Steam will make any corrections necessary and download a few files, then you should be good to go.

Now from next time onwards, whenever you want to move the files, you just gotta cut them from one location and paste into the new SteamLibrary, without having to install-delete-re-install multiple times. The first time is a bit tideous becasue we want Steam to create a self-identifiable Library location to install games into, so it creates the same folder structure and some necessary files there. But once you have an alternate location set, it's all good.

[just.kamk /idle]

Full Steam move:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

For single games / programs:
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8794-yphv-2033
TL;DR: backup a game, restore it to another location.

[Black Mambo № 5]

Backing up using Steam takes a heck lot of time, becasue Steam compresses the current files to create backups.
And Restoring a previous backup takes just about as much time(maybe a bit faster) becasue then it has to decompress those backed-up files.

The method on that support article is for users who want to leave their current installs in the same drive and move Steam to another drive.
However, OP's issue is with less space for games on the current drive and the need to move the games elsewhere.

[SundownKid]

Originally posted by ;458606877311915518:

Originally posted by SundownKid:

Yes, a nearly loaded SSD can mess it up. Use Steam Mover to get your steam games out of there, or use CCleaner to clean up some space, etc.

I just fox'd steam mover and it looks like a 3rd party software and not an actual steam function? Does this program work or will there still be problems with the registry?

It worked fine for me, I used it plenty of times when I had a 120GB SSD.

[Kross Mayne]

@Black Mambo № 5....

So I was following your advice and copied the file to my D: drive, but it started moving a lot of files and folders I didn't select, so I cancelled it to try it again. When I looked at the folder again, BO3 was in the D: drive (maybe not every file idk, but the full sized game was there) and I continued the steps you laid out. It got stuck at either allocating disk space or preparing to download, so I moved the folder into steamapps/common and initialized the download again and it started to download and said it was only going to take a few minutes (versus a few days lol). After it was complete, it started to download the entire game from scratch......so I deleted the local content (prob not a good idea) and even though the game and a lot of the files (if not all of them) are still in the folder I put them in, it kept stalling at the download pop-up window and then exiting the download all together. After doing this few times I put it in the recycling bin (still there) and now its downloading from scratch I think. I don't know what happened and most if not all your steps should work in theory, I think I did something incorrectly when I stopped it from pasting all the files to the new location, but the game and a lot of files in the BO3 folder where moved......maybe they got corrupted or something.

IDK!!! Tough to ask for an answer with this unless you know EXACTLY what I did.....but as of now I'm just letting it download and I just restored the folder from the recycling bin while typing this to see if the download will maybe pick up on it after a while. Thanks for your detailed instructions and help, I'll test this approach again on a smaller game or when I get the internet speed to where it should be.....thanks again!

[Bad 💀 Motha]

When u copy something large like a game from one drive to another, ensure you are choosing "COPY" not "CUT" ~ as the "CUT" command will actually move all that selected data from one to another, which u do not want to do. You want to simply copy, leaving u with 2 full copies on both drives. Reason being is that if the copy does not complete, you can do it again. If you u do CUT in which it is moving data from one drive to another and that crashes or you have to cancel it out. You will be left with a mess.

So always do a copy and then once that is completed successfully, you can go and delete the original copy you have on the drive you were copying from.

[vadim]

Originally posted by gracioushunter:

Having room for temp files and for the OS to "move around" makes sense, I think 25 GB should be enough for this, right?

No. There is two completely different reasons to have additional free space on SSD. First, the same amount of data almost always takes more SSD than HDD space, because of so-called "journal" blocks. Second, wear-levelling algorithms need free space to be able to write data each time to new location. Its a good idea to always have free at least 25% of total SSD capacity.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Some SSDs already have built-in space set aside for "Over Provisioning" for example Corsair. A Corsair GT and GS 240GB you actually get what you pay for in size. These models (I can't speak for others) already have internal 16GB set aside for OP.

Now with say Samsung 850 EVO series (like a 250GB), you will have to setup OP manually, and it is suggested to set aside approx 10% for OP. So overall you will actually have less free space to work with after a single partition format (NTFS, 4k clusters) when comparing a Samsung 250GB to a Corsair 240GB. Cause the Corsair is basically 256GB with 16GB hidden, knocking it down to 240GB. But the Samsung 250GB has yet to have any size set aisde for OP until you do that. So if you did apply an OP of 10%, you'd be knocking this SSD down to 225GB (slightly less actual formatted size)

Overall I like the Samsung ones better. Firstly the RAPID Driver really helps out alot. And you can set the OP manually. You really do not need 10% for OP on an SSD this large. 4-5% set aside for OP is plenty.

As long as you have OP setup, you really do not need to worry about how much free space your SSD has, but again, regardless of the drive, always good to keep them around 10-15% free at all times.

[Black Mambo № 5]

If you "cut-pasted" the original folder to another drive and cancelled the process in between that is what I believe caused an issue with the files. Cut-Paste only if you are doing it for locations in the same drive/volume. Cut-Paste is great for single files mainly media(jpgs, mp3, mp4, etc.), but for folders having multiple sub-folders and files inside them, it's pretty damn risky.

But just to ensure my suggestion works(hadn't tried it for a while), I copied my TF2 folder from my SSD over to an HDD and then back into my SSD to check if it's still working or not when I try to move it to a new SteamLibrary and then back to the previous install location.

It works: http://imgur.com/a/I8HnI

I'll just relist the steps I did in as easier way as possible so in future if you face space-related issues you can easily move the files around:
-- "Copy" original game folder to some other drive.
-- Delete Local Content of the copied game from Steam.
-- Right Click on the game from Steam & install it in a new Steam Library location. #
-- Delete Local Content for the same game again. #
-- Exit Steam, and copy the backup into your new Steam Library location.
-- Open Steam, and install the game, let Steam do it's thing, it'll auto detect the content and/or download any missing files.

# = You only need to do these two steps for the first time, i.e. if you are creating your very first external Steam Library location.