Weekend Question: How much free storage space have you got on your PC?

[PCG Jody]

I ask the PCG staff a regular Weekend Question and post the answers on the site. If you'd like to throw in an answer here, I'll squeeze the best into the finished article!

This week's question is: How much free storage space have you got on your PC?

We've noted that some games are real storage hogs, demanding well over 100GB of space and making you wish you'd picked a bigger SSD when you had the chance. Then the DLC and updates arrive and they take up even more room. Do you routinely clean house to keep space free, or are those bars in Windows Explorer permanently in the red for you?

 

[Alm]

I have 1110GB free over all my 3 SSDs. And 4.91TB free on my external HDD.

I do regularly delete games after a while of non-use.

 

[Hitobat]

I have about 300GB on a Samsung EVO 1TB ssd free.
The main reason I think, is that I'm pretty ruthless with uninstalling Steam games once I realise I haven't played them for a while. I keep only a small area on my desktop for game shortcuts, so that really helps to drive home when I'm adding new games and not cleaning up the old.

 

[Zloth]

If you check Steam's help menu and select System Information, then scroll down, you can get the exact number.

Total Hard Disk Space Available: 5722329 MB

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

According to Steam about 430GB across 3 drives, but I'm a snob and I wont install games to the HDD anymore. I also just culled a few I havent played for a bit.

I would love to keep all of my games installed, as my download is not the fastest at 50mbps. Sometimes I get an urge to play something and its annoying that I cant just launch it. Some bigger games take several hours to download, and often the moment has passed by the time its finished.

Of course you can copy and paste Steam games across to the main directory which is quicker, but my old 2TB disc doesn't hold everything anymore. Time for a bigger mass storage drive in the new year probably, certainly wont be buying a graphics card anytime soon anyway!

 

[Brian Boru]

GB free on…
System SSD: 90
Games SSD: 101
Data HD: 2.56 Terabytes
External backup: 751GB

I don't uninstall much, maybe once a year—then I'll purge a lot from my 1TB games SSD. I may in future move Steam games from G: SSD to the HD, since there's plenty of room there. Then again, over 500GB of the space used on G: is for games other than Steam—BigFish GOG, Epic, Ubisoft being the main ones—so it wouldn't save that much.

 

[ZedClampet]

I have 4.5 TB total space and 1.3 TB available. Roughly 500 GB of what's available is on SSD. Honestly, I could uninstall a bunch of games and never miss them, but that's why I have 3.5 TB of SSD space, so I don't have to do that so often.

 

[Pifanjr]

Just enough for Total War: Warhammer 2 to update. So about 60 GB.

 

[ali28]

i am 500 gb in game play

 

[Ryzengang]

Across my 4 SSDs I have about 470GB free, although that is only technically true. I don't like to completely fill up an SSD so in reality I have a fair amount less space that I'd be willing to use.

 

[mainer]

Across my two 1TB SSD drives that I use for gaming I have 944 GB free, not counting any space available on my backup HDDs which I only use for file storage, as I would never install a game on an HDD anymore, even an old game.

Some games I keep permanently installed, especially if I mod them a lot; other games I'll play then uninstall when I'm done. As @Kaamos_Llama stated, I'd love to keep all my games installed, because sometimes I'll get an urge to play a certain game but don't want to wait 2-3 hours or so just to install it, but I just don't feel I have enough SSD space to do that. Biggest footprint I have now is a heavily modded Fallout 4 installation @ about 70 GB.

It feels like a yearly SSD battle for gamers: more disc space vs faster access times.

 

[pathospades]

I have two disk drives. My brother bought me one because he said they were cheap at the time and I ventured by plugging it in. Such a huge difference.

Total Hard Disk Space Available: 1196902 MB

I still have to clean up my hard drives with TreeSizeFree from season to season, but not as much as I used to. The default setup is really small.

 

[Johnway]

i have 1tb drive and currently i only use 250gb of it (so give or take 70-75% free) i have very few games installed at any given time and atm i'm playing indie games. I frequently uninstall/remove apps /game that i don't use or i've completed.

 

[Brian Boru]

I don't like to completely fill up an SSD

I saw someone knowledgeable—@Lutfij, @Colif ?—recently comment that SSDs can begin to degrade performance when over 50% full.

Can anyone please confirm/deny and maybe expand a little on what sort of downside there might be?

It's important to keep a good chunk of your system drive free, so Windows can move stuff around and keep a temp backup when upgrading the OS. I regard 'a good chunk' as 50GB, but that's arbitrary—what do you experts recommend?

 

[flashn00b]

332 and 302 GB on my SSD's (ADATA Falcon and SU800 respectively). Realized rather quickly that i'd have to pony up and go mechanical in order to have extra storage for things where i CAN afford to have slower loading times. Right now, my Mechanical drive sits at 1.18 TB. I still need to sift through what games can be moved from my SSDs to my mechanical, though I will admit that certain games have earned their SSD honors more than others.

 

[Colif]

ssd get slower if you fill them more than 90%, I don't think its 50% as why would anyone use one? you would essentially only have half the space then.

Nvme - 600gb free (total space 837gb), 90gb unformatted (over provisioning for error correction)
Hdd - 2.58tb free (total space 2.72tb)
total free - 3.18tb
Total Space - 3.5tb (formatted)

I don't use space. Most of the games I play are small. I lost 3 hdd in the early 00's due to using no name Power supplies. When drives just randomly die you sort of don't bother filling drives up.

Prior to current PC, games were always on HDD. In hindisght I probably could have put some on the ssd but only having windows on it meant I could blow away windows and not lose anything else, all games and music and files on hdd.

On this PC, I originally planned to have 2 nvme drives, 1 500gb boot & 1 1tb storage but pricing meant a hdd made more sense for storage. As it stands, I got 1tb nvme for same price as the 500gb was, and could suddenly use it for more than I had planned. So the 3tb hdd was sort of not really needed as much.
There are a few games on the nvme, Diablo 2 is. Not sure what else.

I have 1tb of space on Onedrive from using Office 365 (has a new name now), so all my music, documents, pictures, etc are auto backed up to Onedrive.

 

[Jutsun]

I have half of my SSD full of games already. It's easy so easy to isntall them but then it's hard to find the time to play all the amazing games that are out there, so I just keep piling them up but end up not playing...

 

[Sarafan]

I'm fully on SSDs now and, what might be surprising, I have a lot of free space despite the fact that my drives aren't huge. I own one 500 GB M2, one 250 GB SATA and one 128 SATA SSDs. Right now I have around 444 GB of free storage in overall. The biggest currently installed game on my PC is Doom Eternal which shows around 94 GB after the patches and with all of the DLCs. Basically I didn't have the occasion yet to have a truly huge game installed. I guess STALKER 2 is a good candidate (150 GB required), but even with it I'll still have a lot free space available. Not planning to upgrade my storage capacity in the near future.

 

[Brian Boru]

Storing Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos etc

You don't need a SSD for these kind of personal files, the speed advantage will be between zero and minimal. So if you need a lot of space—typically for a large video collection—it's still far more cost effective to use a large HD, and it doesn't need to be a fast HD either.

SSDs are best used for software, which is typically 'talking' to your storage frequently while running. Always have Windows on SSD, and any other programs you use regularly—all of them if you have the space.

Not all games will benefit much from SSD, but most of the big ones should—I don't bother trying to figure that out, I just put all my installed games on SSD, and uninstall occasionally when it fills up.

My Storage Setup

256GB SSD—for OS & programs only, small size makes the monthly disk image under 30 minutes, and easy to clone if I need to transfer to another PC.

1TB SSD—for games, where my replays are permanently installed. Others I install to play, then uninstall.

4TB HDD—for files. I use my PC for work & play, so I have a lot of documents built up over the years—but only half full.

4TB External USB—to backup the HDD and keep some archives of old stuff, plus a few 256 SSD images.

Server—I have a server share for our biz, and occasionally upload a backup of our most important documents there—painful with upload speeds. I also have a bunch of TBs on OneDrive—part of MS 365—which I've used very little, but probably will/should.

 

[itsguillermo123]

I ask the PCG staff a regular Weekend Question and post the answers on the site. If you'd like to throw in an answer here, I'll squeeze the best into the finished article!

This week's question is: How much free storage space have you got on your PC?

We've noted that some games are real storage hogs, demanding well over 100GB of space and making you wish you'd picked a bigger SSD when you had the chance. Then the DLC and updates arrive and they take up even more room. Do you routinely clean house to keep space free, or are those bars in Windows Explorer permanently in the red for you?

128Gb

 

[Enntröpy]

Holly hell, everyone here is ballin' with their drives!

I have 1.2 TB of total space, and it's a miracle when I have more than 100 GB free.

In my defence, I don't mind the time it takes me to download things (25 MB/s down) and I've never had a thing such as internet cuts or slowdowns. I've purchased thousands of games over the years, and I've always hated the idea of backlogs and forced credit-roll chores, so whenever I have the slight itch for something, I download it, play it for an hour, a week or a month, and then it goes back to the limbo until the next time. I never have more than 10 games installed, and they are always on a constant rotation, so more space would be equals to more games installed that probably won't be touched in years.

 

[cuttlefishjones]

I'm like a data hoarder, I hate deleting anything and I've been gathering stuff since my first PC, but I store a lot on NAS rather than locally but in my main desktop I have a 1TB firecuda for windows, a 2TB 980pro for Games, 2 4TB SSDs and 3 4TB HDs for storing stuff. In my gaming latop I have 1TB WD for windows and a 2TB 980 for games.

 

[Brian Boru]

I'm like a data hoarder

23 Terabytes??? 🥴

Holy Metaverse Diskman, that's… that's… well, that's just greedy!