Question about Steam and storage capacity
Question about Steam and storage capacity
You've reached a situation where purchasing and installing another drive seems like the most practical solution, or you might consider removing unused games and software to free up space...
Steam continues to operate as expected, allocating space even if it was previously assigned by the user before downloading or installing a game or program.
I've encountered this issue many times when I had limited free space or fewer drives installed. Perhaps Steam could be improved, or maybe someone has a method to help everyone avoid buying additional drives. However, I haven't found a better solution yet.
In my case, I can no longer add more drives because my PC is already at full capacity—beyond swapping out drives for higher capacity isn't an option. I'll have to uninstall or format the system and start over if this problem arises again.
I also hope that with everyone's help you can find a way to resolve this on your own, good luck!
In your recent post, I wanted to start by expressing my gratitude. One thing that has proven useful in building setups, especially with a connected LAN, is keeping at least one PC on the network with a substantial HDD. I use it for archiving, old movies, music, photos, and other files, as well as for storing games. This approach was adopted because I had previously hit a data limit with my ISP; otherwise, if I had downloaded a game, it would have been better to move it to the larger HDD rather than deleting it in case I needed to reinstall. While playing directly from the HDD is not ideal for recent and large files like games, it can be useful to relocate older ones just in case you feel nostalgic.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about removing games I haven’t played in a period I haven’t defined yet. The method I used has led to the inevitable issue of running out of space, and some of these games have been untouched for years. Fortunately, I currently have a faster connection and no data cap, so I might try the delete/reload approach you mentioned.
In the system and situation I described, I decided to install a larger drive, and the process works well as long as there is at least double the available space to accommodate it. Then I located, corrected, and verified the library entry.
While installing games on my Ally that were already on my main PC, I discovered that logging into Steam on several devices instead of downloading from servers caused the installation to occur over my local network. It was unexpected since I usually just copied, pasted, and verified.
I think this feature is quite useful, you’d likely achieve impressive speeds with a local connection setup like that.
I’m still constrained by my ISP (and I don’t have a LAN), here the speeds aren’t improving even though prices stay the same, it’s been like this for years—since the pandemic, I guess. Everyone seemed to overlook that upgrading speeds at the same monthly cost was a big reason to keep improving. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve just chosen to increase my PC storage, so now I only download once and use the install & verify method when playing Steam, Rockstar games, EA, or Ubisoft titles.
Among all these options, I believe Rockstar games are performing the best. Their system is far more efficient and delivers the highest performance, allowing you to reach full hardware capabilities even after reinstalling or verifying already downloaded games on your PC.