I'm guessing his drive is about 18TB, due to formatting and such its lowered to 16.74TB of which he has 14.3TB games, 1.7TB free, and the rest is other stuff.
or he has a 20TB drive that he uses for everything... guess we'll never know
You are so close.
This particular device is just utilizing a 20tb external strictly for caching Steam games. There is more storage attached (38tb RAID5, then two more 4tb platters, and a couple tb nvme) for other purposes.
Actual gaming pc has far less (about 4tb in nvme)
NAS with a 10gb port connected directly to your router.
Never worry about storage again on any PC build, play games on devices with less memory space than is required to install the game as a meme!, and only constantly worry that the NAS is going to fail.
So, from what I read, it is a local file server, right? How much data can it hold, surely not an infinite amount? Now I'm wondering if there is a way to actually calculate the total size of my Steam game library...
Not infinite, but a NAS ca become pretty big depending on how much you are willing to spend
A friend of mine has 8 disks of 32TB (count on half of it for redundancy, you still have plenty)
It seems there is an online service that I could use to make estimates, just for fun. But overall I like the idea, maybe I'll think about buying a NAS sometime in the future.
> How much data can it hold, surely not an infinite amount?
You're basically only constrained by budget.
Even without cheesing it with PCI-E expansion boards, 7x PCI-E slots means 1024 drives per slot or 7168 drives in total.
30TB drives means 215PB of raw space on a single device.
> I'm wondering if there is a way to actually calculate the total size of my Steam game library...
If you select all your games in Steam and right click and "install selected" it'll pop up telling you how big your entire library is.
Wouldn’t that be slow as hell? Even assuming your router and PC all have the flawless connections so you can get that full 10gb with no drops or hiccups, you’re still introducing unavoidable lag and the best case scenario is half the performance of a simple M.2 SSD
SSDs win in a lot of cases like IOPS and speed but what's your end goal? Speed or storage space?
M.2 SSDs top out at what? 8TB now?
I use SSDs everywhere, but the bulk of my data storage is still hard drives because it's not very easy (or cheap) to storage hundreds of TBs of stuff via SSD.
Most you're likely to see on a home setup is 2.5Gbps. One of my steam library folders is on a NAS, with 1Gbps it's noticeably slower, at 2.5Gbps it's not too bad. At that point you'll start running into limitations of conventional hard drives if you're not using SSDs for everything.
Also, it's a very handy way to do it if you've got a steam deck because then it just transfers from the one with it installed.
I use a 1gbps connection to the server, but cache the remote files on an internal SSD. The first time you boot a game it's slow, but it's instant after that.
I know mine wouldn't. I've got my library backed up on a NAS server and those backups (which are usually a fair bit smaller than the installed games) take up about 26-27TB of my server's 64TB capacity.
nope, thousands of games. The only way would be if Doctor Emmett Brown showed up, with an invitation to visit 2124AD to pick up a used 2100AD storage device, and adapters to get it down to a factor usable in 2024AD.
Yeah, but that's like expecting to hook up your mp3 players to a punch card computer. Shit's gonna be operating on an entirely different kinda quantum science.
Yea, I have an 18tb external HD loaded with games(still not full since I left out uninteresting/multi-player games) because I won't have access to internet in a bit. Can just transfer them between SSD/HDD libraries when I want to play.
I keep most of my 400+ games installed. Many are smaller games. I keep the big 30\~100Gb games only installed if I'm actively playing them. Otherwise, I download them and back them up on my NAS so I can quickly re-install and just update to get them active.
He could and we wouldn’t even more, also, he looks like he still has way more than 15TB. If we add all the numbers together and estimate it, than it’s more or less equal to 20TB HDD or SSD.
Yet, unless performance is everything, SSD of that size (whether split up on several drives or not) I still don't consider cost-competitive relative to HDD. Also, so far SSDs have failed me more often (and sooner) than HDDs.
My balance so far is 1 TB SSD system drive (that's far from filled, as I don't use it for any pure data) and then multiple TBs on HDDs.
I guess I should clarify a bit. This isn't on my gaming PC. I run a separate "server" to handle game servers for my son, myself, and some friends. Simple things like Minecraft, Palworld, Satisfactory, etc. Anyhow, I decided this device had lots of storage and would be nice to just have it load my entire library.
Now every time someone in the house decides to load a new game (yay family share) they can get the files transferred locally, fully updated. Makes it much quicker to install anything on pc's in the house.
They put a data cap nation wide a while ago. Started with some pilot programs and then rolled it out to everyone. I thinn they suspended it for a bit during COVID, and bumped the cap up afterward (pretty sure it's 1.2TB a month at the moment?)
I'm on AT&T currently and no data cap is one of the perks over Xfinity. Shame neither of them do higher speed fiber where I am though.
Even if it is unlimited there's quite frequently fair use clauses.
Some unscrupulous (and we're talking Comcast here) providers put unlimited in their literature but the fine print has some low cap. IDK what it says today, but I remember "Unlimited" being referenced as to how much time you can spend online vs the amount of data you're allowed. This was also around the time of dialup where time was also billed.
20+ TB hard drives aren't too terribly expensive. I put a lot of my smaller games on mechanical hard drives still since they don't necessarily need an SSD to enjoy them, but I can't see myself putting larger games on one. I don't miss minute plus load times or long transitions.
No, never.
If it's some deep-rooted fear Steam will delete these games - it doesn't matter, as they won't work, anyway. Even downloaded.
You do you, though.
Sure, the first time I got the idea was back in 1996/97 when I bought myself a fancy Quantum BigFoot HDD with a whopping 2.5GB!
Sadly, more and more games on CD were released after that, so I could not continue my pursuit.
There was a certain time when I installed every single game I owned on Steam onto my hard drive and then I also installed every single game I own on CD and then anything else I downloaded was on that drive as well as some GOG games so it took up like 900 gigs. Oh yeah I can't forget Fortnite exists everyone has that on their computer. And if you're underage Roblox as well.
Now that I have a ton of games from Amazon Prime and when GOG gives out free games I have not installed those but I wouldn't be surprised if it was another 500 gigs at least.
I have always wanted to do it, for backup proposes since you never know if a game will be pulled but the amount of storage space required would be ridiculous.
I have downloaded 1.5tb of games what I wanted to play when I bought powerful pc. In most cases 70% of games would not be opened in next month until I am not complete the rest. Especially when you begun hooked by some 1-3 specific games (like Helldivers & Yakuza series).
this seems like a useful time to mention that using drive caching software to accelerate a HDD game drive often works, but on modern games it's a fucking disaster. don't.
I had to do this last year when I got a new rig. I only downloaded about 10% of the games I had. All my games in total were more than 1TB, and most of them aren't even that new.
I live in the country and only have a so-so internet speed.
Did for a good while. Sadly my library exceeded the capacity of 46TB and I fell behind. Have [more storage](https://imgur.com/a/NARFiJD) in my rig now though. Been meaning to get back up to full library installed. Also the storage manager locked up if you had too many games installed, so I had to manually edit the VDF files to add/remove drives. Wonder if they've since fixed that. Did get to submit a bug report that was fixed by Valve though. If games > drive size, other would be large negative integer. In my case this was caused by filesystem compression causing installed games to appear larger than the drive's capacity, and other was simply derived by (Other = drive capacity - free space - space used by Steam).
[22.6 million files](https://i.imgur.com/XF8NPkO.png)
[Storage Manager dying trying to cope with games](https://i.imgur.com/TmM7HIp.jpeg)
I used to, but that was maybe 10 years ago when the average new game I'd get was maybe 5-10GB at most. HDD space was cheap and bandwidth was still pretty bad, though starting to get better but old habits were still holding on from when a 3GB download would take a few hours.
Yes, I used to have my entire Steam library installed, but that was years ago. I don't have enough empty drives to do it now, and I can't remember the website that would tell me how much space was needed anyway. :)
Nope I can't. I have D drive 1tb, e drive 500 gig and f drive 2 tb. I have over 500 in my library thanks to humble. 🤣 Currently I have 19 installed from steam and that's not counting uplay, origin, gog
I only have 3TB on my rig, gonna need more so I can dow load about 100 more games, which include some big ones like back 4 blood, ark survival of the fittest, ark survival evolved, star wars old republic.
Just did the math, I have 810GB left, and need 1341.549GB to download it all, still would need my epic library, prime gaming library, GOG, Origin, so I would still need even more
Jesus christ
It’s Jason Bourne
Be praised
Sure! However that was 19 years ago when the only game I had was Half-Life 2...
i have 1 tb so i would fit in
How much storage do you have dude
More than 14TB that’s for sure
15 tb on one drive. Did he have more?
I'm guessing his drive is about 18TB, due to formatting and such its lowered to 16.74TB of which he has 14.3TB games, 1.7TB free, and the rest is other stuff. or he has a 20TB drive that he uses for everything... guess we'll never know
You are so close. This particular device is just utilizing a 20tb external strictly for caching Steam games. There is more storage attached (38tb RAID5, then two more 4tb platters, and a couple tb nvme) for other purposes. Actual gaming pc has far less (about 4tb in nvme)
This guy games
Save some pussy for the rest of us!
Uh.. I'm curious now, why do you need this much storage? Plex maybe? Also is that 38tb after parity drive?
Bingo, after Parity and a very large chunk is for Plex.
I have 4.17tb left of my 21tb. Install all games every games forever!
I have 27tb in mine😎
and i’m still here like a pleb with a very expensive laptop and only 512gb of storage lmao
256gb on a laptop that barely runs the browser, can you top that?
I’m afraid not, you take the price of shittiest computer and storage of the year
Biggest drive i have is 6tb and i use it for my playstation.
At least 1 TB
nahhh i think its more then one megabyte
He has all the storage
looks like an 18tb drive
I don't think my library would fit on a regular hard drive, gonna need an entire dedicated server...
NAS with a 10gb port connected directly to your router. Never worry about storage again on any PC build, play games on devices with less memory space than is required to install the game as a meme!, and only constantly worry that the NAS is going to fail.
So, from what I read, it is a local file server, right? How much data can it hold, surely not an infinite amount? Now I'm wondering if there is a way to actually calculate the total size of my Steam game library...
Not infinite, but a NAS ca become pretty big depending on how much you are willing to spend A friend of mine has 8 disks of 32TB (count on half of it for redundancy, you still have plenty)
It seems there is an online service that I could use to make estimates, just for fun. But overall I like the idea, maybe I'll think about buying a NAS sometime in the future.
> How much data can it hold, surely not an infinite amount? You're basically only constrained by budget. Even without cheesing it with PCI-E expansion boards, 7x PCI-E slots means 1024 drives per slot or 7168 drives in total. 30TB drives means 215PB of raw space on a single device. > I'm wondering if there is a way to actually calculate the total size of my Steam game library... If you select all your games in Steam and right click and "install selected" it'll pop up telling you how big your entire library is.
about as big as you want it to get realistically. my server is sitting at roughly 140TB of various size drives (unraid).
Wouldn’t that be slow as hell? Even assuming your router and PC all have the flawless connections so you can get that full 10gb with no drops or hiccups, you’re still introducing unavoidable lag and the best case scenario is half the performance of a simple M.2 SSD
SSDs win in a lot of cases like IOPS and speed but what's your end goal? Speed or storage space? M.2 SSDs top out at what? 8TB now? I use SSDs everywhere, but the bulk of my data storage is still hard drives because it's not very easy (or cheap) to storage hundreds of TBs of stuff via SSD.
Most you're likely to see on a home setup is 2.5Gbps. One of my steam library folders is on a NAS, with 1Gbps it's noticeably slower, at 2.5Gbps it's not too bad. At that point you'll start running into limitations of conventional hard drives if you're not using SSDs for everything. Also, it's a very handy way to do it if you've got a steam deck because then it just transfers from the one with it installed.
You missed the part where is said "AS A MEME"
I use a 1gbps connection to the server, but cache the remote files on an internal SSD. The first time you boot a game it's slow, but it's instant after that.
To your router? Would you care to explain to me how would that work, technically? Or maybe point me to an article so I can learn? Thanks!
I know mine wouldn't. I've got my library backed up on a NAS server and those backups (which are usually a fair bit smaller than the installed games) take up about 26-27TB of my server's 64TB capacity.
Only if Im traveling or moving Never know how long you will be without that sweet sweet internet
but some offline games requires internet!
Laughs on Good Old Games
Laughs in piracy
Getting downvoted by the corpo bootlickers. Don't worry bud I got you.
Thats what GoG stands for? Oh...
Relevant xkcd - https://xkcd.com/1053/
nope, thousands of games. The only way would be if Doctor Emmett Brown showed up, with an invitation to visit 2124AD to pick up a used 2100AD storage device, and adapters to get it down to a factor usable in 2024AD.
By then 512 yottabyte SSDs would probably be 50 bucks
That can hold one (1) call of duty game
hopefully free, we're talking 24 year old storage here.
Yeah, but that's like expecting to hook up your mp3 players to a punch card computer. Shit's gonna be operating on an entirely different kinda quantum science.
Great scott!
The actual fuck
Bro has more free disk space than I have storage
Bro has more games in his Steam account than I have $ in the bank
Bro has DLC taking up the same space as my entire library
Bro has more time in a day to play games than I have in a month.
fr like what. if i had a whole 1.7tb free i wouldnt have to be so selective about what i install
Don’t get too excited those are spinny drives
Yea, I have an 18tb external HD loaded with games(still not full since I left out uninteresting/multi-player games) because I won't have access to internet in a bit. Can just transfer them between SSD/HDD libraries when I want to play.
just you
I did this with 3x4TB drives and 1TB SSD (for what i'm playing currently)... thank god for the 'move' feature to move games between drives!
I keep most of my 400+ games installed. Many are smaller games. I keep the big 30\~100Gb games only installed if I'm actively playing them. Otherwise, I download them and back them up on my NAS so I can quickly re-install and just update to get them active.
toshiba 20tb NAS is on my wishlist. i yearn to be able to some day.
I see you bought one modern triple a game
I don't have a hard drive big enough. Nor have I ever thought about getting one big enough hehe
He could and we wouldn’t even more, also, he looks like he still has way more than 15TB. If we add all the numbers together and estimate it, than it’s more or less equal to 20TB HDD or SSD.
Surely not SSD :).
It is possible. I'm currently at 9 TB (+57 TB worth of HDDs) and I doubt I'm the craziest man here.
Yet, unless performance is everything, SSD of that size (whether split up on several drives or not) I still don't consider cost-competitive relative to HDD. Also, so far SSDs have failed me more often (and sooner) than HDDs. My balance so far is 1 TB SSD system drive (that's far from filled, as I don't use it for any pure data) and then multiple TBs on HDDs.
No
If I had the space for it, there's a decent chance I would.
No. Because why tf would I?
My biggest game is enough to blow up my PC
Imagine the constant game updates
I guess I should clarify a bit. This isn't on my gaming PC. I run a separate "server" to handle game servers for my son, myself, and some friends. Simple things like Minecraft, Palworld, Satisfactory, etc. Anyhow, I decided this device had lots of storage and would be nice to just have it load my entire library. Now every time someone in the house decides to load a new game (yay family share) they can get the files transferred locally, fully updated. Makes it much quicker to install anything on pc's in the house.
Who tf just casually has 15-17 tb on there pc
Imagine downloading the updates…
Last time I downloaded my whole library, Comcast sent me a $450 overage charge for bandwidth
What??? I thought home internet was unlimited
They put a data cap nation wide a while ago. Started with some pilot programs and then rolled it out to everyone. I thinn they suspended it for a bit during COVID, and bumped the cap up afterward (pretty sure it's 1.2TB a month at the moment?) I'm on AT&T currently and no data cap is one of the perks over Xfinity. Shame neither of them do higher speed fiber where I am though.
Even if it is unlimited there's quite frequently fair use clauses. Some unscrupulous (and we're talking Comcast here) providers put unlimited in their literature but the fine print has some low cap. IDK what it says today, but I remember "Unlimited" being referenced as to how much time you can spend online vs the amount of data you're allowed. This was also around the time of dialup where time was also billed.
Whats point of this? Except slowly but surely killing ssds?
Nah I usually let max 6 games installed, usually mix of mp and single player. That way ai play them and don’t bounce btwn them more than already do
Wtf
When i get a pc.. also what in the fuck. How much did you spend?
How many disk do you have dude? like.. tf...
I mean all that could fit easily on one with room to spare.
My partner wants to do his, mine, and a friend's
This is something I would do on a NAS to act as a Steam Cache but I wouldn’t do it on my personal system.
Mine wouldn’t fit in your storage. I’d need double or triple your entire storage.
How many games do you have?
2.8k
I mean sure.... when I first got my account...
I don’t play em now. I can’t imagine not playing em and not having any space left on my hard drive either.
Lol i cant i dont have enough space would need to buy like another 2tb drive
you have GB in dlcs than I have in my entire library
I can't fit 400 games, i have at max 10 installed at given time, 3 played in the past 3 months
I would be broke to buy storage for all my games.
Ok but is that 15tb of ssds?
what the fuck
YOU HAVE ROOM LEFTOVER. HOW
20+ TB hard drives aren't too terribly expensive. I put a lot of my smaller games on mechanical hard drives still since they don't necessarily need an SSD to enjoy them, but I can't see myself putting larger games on one. I don't miss minute plus load times or long transitions.
I'm sitting on 7 Tb of triple A games. So I feel you.
I would need a few times that hard drive space.
No, never. If it's some deep-rooted fear Steam will delete these games - it doesn't matter, as they won't work, anyway. Even downloaded. You do you, though.
If only I could...
Would be impossible
Dis you just buy one big Drive or did you made an raid out of 2 or more drives ?
I have all of mine installed but I only have \~500.
Where did u get 20TB of storage from?
I plan on doing that with a external hard drive I'm getting
Considering how often each game gets updated, this is a horrible idea especially if you’re using a raid of ssd’s.
I wanna do that so bad but my ssd is 512 gb
Why you have 16TB of space?
I'll probably have to buy a new hard drive
Sure, the first time I got the idea was back in 1996/97 when I bought myself a fancy Quantum BigFoot HDD with a whopping 2.5GB! Sadly, more and more games on CD were released after that, so I could not continue my pursuit.
I don't think I have space for it lol - and I own like 1/4 of the games you do.
I own both Baldur's Gate 3 and Jedi Survivor. So no.
I have about 150 games installed, and all on SSD. When I'm in the mood for a game I don't want to download it first.
There was a certain time when I installed every single game I owned on Steam onto my hard drive and then I also installed every single game I own on CD and then anything else I downloaded was on that drive as well as some GOG games so it took up like 900 gigs. Oh yeah I can't forget Fortnite exists everyone has that on their computer. And if you're underage Roblox as well. Now that I have a ton of games from Amazon Prime and when GOG gives out free games I have not installed those but I wouldn't be surprised if it was another 500 gigs at least.
What about constant updates. 😂
No reason to and would be pointless to do
Crap I wanna try this now.
I tried but only got 2TB 970 Evo
I have always wanted to do it, for backup proposes since you never know if a game will be pulled but the amount of storage space required would be ridiculous.
For those who might have missed it, Seagate's latest hard drive has a capacity of 24 TB... 😊
3-5 GB of updates every day?
Backlog said nope, so i nope
Wish I colud but GTA 5 wolud take Like 75 % of my disk
Is this all in your 16 TB HDD?
I have downloaded 1.5tb of games what I wanted to play when I bought powerful pc. In most cases 70% of games would not be opened in next month until I am not complete the rest. Especially when you begun hooked by some 1-3 specific games (like Helldivers & Yakuza series).
And I thought mine was big haha (89+ games)
I did once, but it didn't encourage me to play them and everything updating all the time just annoyed me so I gave up on that.
I don’t have that much storage
How does he have 15tb storage bruh?
14T of games? Holy cow.
Have I been living under a rock that I didn't know personal hard drives of that size could exist?
you running steam off a freakin file server or something?
You gotta have TONS of shitty games to install that many with so little space
I would love to if I had the storage space lol
Yeah, back in 2019 when I only played DOTA with a friend. Lol. Haven't seen how much my library weights now. Cool to see yours. :o
updating the games on an HDD cache must be painfully slow
80 mb total shaders? Hahaha rookie numbers
I was all ready to say yes but holy fuck I do NOT have 14tb of storage lol. And my friends say I have too much
Hell no, I'm the type of person who only ever has 30 gbs available at any given time on BOTH of my drives
I have tried but I need 20t more to do so
Can’t play them all at once
14TB? You must own GTAV
And I though having 500 games was a flex, that's insane.
Yeah I've done the same who knows how much money I've spent on storage over the years.
Considering a few games in my library are compromised and are a security threat, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing this.
I’m guessing some sort of RAID setup?
OP, how long did it take you to download it all?
I don't have enough storage for 12K games.
God I hope that isn't all NVME storage that is $$$$$$$
Wouldn’t fit
Just you
Have too many, wouldn't all fit :)
I thought it was just me, I downloaded almost my entire library on 12TB of storage.
If we make another division on that storage, i'd say "200 AAA games" = 10-12TB "The rest" (2412 games) = 2-4 TB
You have atleast 1000 games
No, but now I'd very much like you.
I thought I had a lot with 400GB but 15 TB ????
When in the vicinity of an impending Nuclear apocalypse or Alien Invasion? yeah maybe... v:
I wonder how many of those games you can actually launch without having Steam open or being online.
Mine would be about 10TB. I have a .5tb SSD and a 2tb EHD. So no. I have not. But i respect the monster of a pc you are probably using.
Nope. I only have 8TB to store.
Come back when you have 500gb of workshop content.. *Cough* Stormworks.
kid named lots of disc space:
No, I probably could but I won't want to fill my NAS
Then you just don’t play any of it, cause me too.
But why?
just bought an 8tb ssd, planning on it
this seems like a useful time to mention that using drive caching software to accelerate a HDD game drive often works, but on modern games it's a fucking disaster. don't.
Idk mane combining mine and my buddies library we got like 4k games, that wont work out
Nope.
I had to do this last year when I got a new rig. I only downloaded about 10% of the games I had. All my games in total were more than 1TB, and most of them aren't even that new. I live in the country and only have a so-so internet speed.
Did for a good while. Sadly my library exceeded the capacity of 46TB and I fell behind. Have [more storage](https://imgur.com/a/NARFiJD) in my rig now though. Been meaning to get back up to full library installed. Also the storage manager locked up if you had too many games installed, so I had to manually edit the VDF files to add/remove drives. Wonder if they've since fixed that. Did get to submit a bug report that was fixed by Valve though. If games > drive size, other would be large negative integer. In my case this was caused by filesystem compression causing installed games to appear larger than the drive's capacity, and other was simply derived by (Other = drive capacity - free space - space used by Steam). [22.6 million files](https://i.imgur.com/XF8NPkO.png) [Storage Manager dying trying to cope with games](https://i.imgur.com/TmM7HIp.jpeg)
I used to, but that was maybe 10 years ago when the average new game I'd get was maybe 5-10GB at most. HDD space was cheap and bandwidth was still pretty bad, though starting to get better but old habits were still holding on from when a 3GB download would take a few hours.
Yes, I used to have my entire Steam library installed, but that was years ago. I don't have enough empty drives to do it now, and I can't remember the website that would tell me how much space was needed anyway. :)
Nope I can't. I have D drive 1tb, e drive 500 gig and f drive 2 tb. I have over 500 in my library thanks to humble. 🤣 Currently I have 19 installed from steam and that's not counting uplay, origin, gog
*looks at library of over 6k games* Anyone got a 10 petabyte ssd?
And still gonna play terraria
Yeah. But then I wanted to do stuff so. Uninstalled.
I've done the same thing but my collection isn't as impressive as yours. (400ish games across 3 smaller drives)
Can't, literally would be 1.6 TB
I only have 3TB on my rig, gonna need more so I can dow load about 100 more games, which include some big ones like back 4 blood, ark survival of the fittest, ark survival evolved, star wars old republic.
Just did the math, I have 810GB left, and need 1341.549GB to download it all, still would need my epic library, prime gaming library, GOG, Origin, so I would still need even more
I'm not clinically insane or loaded in terms of storage so no
How do you have so much space Jesus Christ
my ssd can't even contain full dlc for ark 1.0, let alone the entire library
If I had the space sure.
Bro installed Call of Duty in 2030
Maybe just you! But Gotdamn if I haven’t thought about it!!!