Windows 11 Storage Capacity Issue

Alaka'i Hennings · Mar 5, 2022

I've been using this product for at least the past three months, and I am very satisfied with the product; however, there is an issue that has been recurring with the storage. I'm a gamer, and as one can suspect, most popular games require storage space either just below, at, or above 10 GBs. This computer's entire storage capacity is 55.5 GBs of space. Whenever I download a new game and I am not sure if I have enough space, I'd like to have at least 3 - 5 GBs of storage left after the download. To have a better understanding of the situation, here is an example.

I have the Uplay launcher up and running. I plan on downloading Farcry 4, which requires 30 GBs of space. I make sure I have enough storage to make things run smoother. Knowing this, I go ahead with the download. This is where the problem reveals itself. When a download begins, I like to open my file explorer and check the progress. Whenever I reload the "This pc" file, I know the current storage space is 30.2 GBs, but when the reload is finished the remaining space dramatically drops roughly around 1.70 GBs. This has happened to me on multiple occasions. Is this a common problem or is it unique? If it is either common or unique, I would like to know how to solve this issue.

:)

Nursemorph

I covered that in the post above.

As to "figure out how to move storage space from my OneDrive to the hard drive": You can't move storage space from OneDrive (digital cloud storage) to your hard drive (physical)...it doesn't work like that. The only way to increase storage space is either delete enough off of your primary drive to create the required space or purchase more storage either with an internal drive or an external drive

Nursemorph

Fully agree with O.P. here. Buying extra storage would be the ideal as it means you arern't always worrying about space. Difficult to say without knowing your system and what slots etc are available but you can get a decent 512GB M.2 SSD for less than £50 ($70) or, if your system doesn't have the capacity, a decent 512GB SSD for around £35 ($50).

An example of the M.2 (make sure to research as not all devices will be able to carry an M.2 SSD or may even already have one):

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Integral-512GB-Internal-2000MB-1600MB

Example of SSD:

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT480BX500SSD1-Internal-Solid-State/

As said, these are just examples but gives you an idea

Nursemorph

This happens with some games...presumably some files are compressed to reduce the download demand. FC4 on Steam, for example, back in 2014 was apparently a 21GB download...which then became 30GB+ when installing

Alaka'i Hennings

How do I buy additional storage? I've been trying to do some research on this for a while but came up with empty leads. I asked a previous question about the MCC Launcher for Halo Reach, in which requires 133.13 GBs of space, but my computer only holds 55.5 GBs. I'm also trying to figure out how to move storage space from my OneDrive to the hard drive. In the meantime, I've been trying to use OneDrive as a temp. storage until the transfer is done but whenever my hopes are up, the download is using the hard drive storage instead of OneDrive's.

Ricardo Lechuga

Hi Alaka'i! My name is Ricardo an independent advisor ready to help you with this situation!

Every time you reload your file explorer the available space it's reduced or just after the end of the installation of the games?

Does this happens only on games installed trough Uplay launcher?

The problem could be the system temporary files, you could try to clean them

1.- Hit the Windows key, then open the Settings menu.

2.- Select the System section, then navigate to Storage.

3.- Click on the Temporary files section.

4.- Checkmark all the files you want to delete, then click on the Remove files button.

Windows 11 Storage Capacity Issue