15GB... more than one year

[Varis 34]

Would love to try out the new Tanks DLC + update but Steam keeps having an issue installing the 15.2GB patch. I've cleared the download cache, moved Steam default folder to another drive, and re-downloaded the 15.2GB twice, but still no go.

 

Everything seems fine until at the very end of the Installing... step where the estimated time remaining is first about 50 seconds or 3 minutes and the starts slowly climbing until it says "over one year" and then Steam just apparently gives up and starts from the Verifying... step all over again. Looking at Windows Task Manager, I see one of my drives (previously Steam default folder) is maxed out at 100% load. This is an older disk drive from at least 5 years back... but technically it should have little to do with the installation by now. Before you flame me about putting ARMA on such an old shit rig I have to say that the other drives are 2 x modern day SSD (eg. Samsung 960).

 

I checked with the standard tool WIMC and there were no SMART issues given for the drive... so not sure what's with this, I have to say that I for some weird reason have only 8GB of RAM physically installed and I didn't check if this might affect it (I have closed the web browser while updating so I don't think it's an issue).

 

What gives, have you seen this problem and is it time to reinstall ARMA? 

[Beagle 684]

The Tanks DLC was less then 2GB. 15,2 GB is the whole ArmA III game including all DLC.

Looks like you uninstalled ArmA III.

[Varis 34]

It's very strange then - it somehow uninstalled or got messed up by itself? Steam shows everything installed including all DLC and even some workshop content was succesfully updating in the meanwhile!

 

But this could be an insightful comment - possibly the install status is somehow messed up and that's the exact thing what's not working and Steam gives up trying to mark the update done.

 

PS. I bought the DLC2 bundle way back, and I think the Steam client installed that 2GB update succesfully first before proceeding with the 15.2GB one.

[sethcombs@gmail.com 0]

Varis, did you ever get this fixed?? I'm having the same problem and I have no idea how to fix it.

[Varis 34]

One obvious solution is to reinstall ARMA 3 - didn't get around to trying that yet.

[Varis 34]

One possible problem - if I tell Steam to just erase the game, what happens to all the scenarios I've created in the editor? I haven't even uploaded them online, because there must be too much crap already.

 

Is there a good way to take a backup when not being able to even start the game?

[stanhope 409]

Your missions are saved here:
C:\Users\YourUser\Documents\Arma 3 - Other Profiles\yourProfile\missions

Or here:
C:\Users\YourUser\Documents\Arma 3\missions

 

All subfolders of either of those folders are missions you made in the editor.

[Varis 34]

Cool - so all the stuff saved is under those folders?

[stanhope 409]

No, only all the missions you made in the editor.  If you want to back up even more simply safe the entire profile folder.

 

(Which would be either:
C:\Users\YourUser\Documents\Arma 3
or
C:\Users\YourUser\Documents\Arma 3 - Other Profiles\yourProfile)

[lex__1 422]

I once had a similar problem with downloading a large update.
Steam does not change the original game files on the fly. Steam reserves space on the HDD for almost double the amount of the update. If there is not enough disk space, you may experience similar problems with downloading the update. Often downloaded files are highly defragmented, which affects the increase of space, and makes it difficult to lay files in the defragmented space.
I contacted Steam with this problem, but there was only one way out - an increase in free space.
When downloading occurs, you can pay attention to Steam on the activity of recording on the HDD. If the recording has dropped to 0mb / s, pause the update and defragment the HDD. On SSD this also happens, but very rarely.

[Varis 34]

10 hours ago, lex__1 said:

I once had a similar problem with downloading a large update.
Steam does not change the original game files on the fly. Steam reserves space on the HDD for almost double the amount of the update. If there is not enough disk space, you may experience similar problems with downloading the update. Often downloaded files are highly defragmented, which affects the increase of space, and makes it difficult to lay files in the defragmented space.
I contacted Steam with this problem, but there was only one way out - an increase in free space.
When downloading occurs, you can pay attention to Steam on the activity of recording on the HDD. If the recording has dropped to 0mb / s, pause the update and defragment the HDD. On SSD this also happens, but very rarely.

 

Well foxtrot me - I recently freed more space on the drive (SSD) and now the patching is successful. But disk space does sink from 54 to 39 GB while the process is ongoing. On to download the 5.8 GB patch...

 

Guess it's strongly recommended to reserve a bit of extra space to Steam, not just Windows. NAND manufacturers will be happy!

[Varis 34]

Great stuff. Thanks for the help!

 

Actually during the whole update process it seems disk space sunk even down to 20 GB free, and now remains at 28 GB even after clearing download cache. I guess not all bloat is bad  Still claims ARMA3 only takes 31 GB on disk.

 

It's a bit surprising one of the applications Western society is built upon is so inflexible. Then again, I mentioned Windows too...

[Jnr4817 215]

interesting topic. So what areas of steam and Arma would one delete to free up extra space?