Vortex eats up 900gb of disk space

[DjBorsch]

Hi all,

I'm trying to install a collection for Skyrim AE (Gate To Sovngarde) via Vortex 1.13.7. However, when I try to do so, Vortex seems to reserve way too much disk space for deployment - almost 900 GB instead of the advertised 150 GB. 

The "vortexmods" folder is the downloads folder, and the size there checks out - it's 55 GB of GTS and the rest is another collection I tried to download to see if its size is also inflated on installation (it is). The "Vortex Mods" folder is the deployment folder. Of the 508 GB of Program Files, the Skyrim folder takes 452 GB.

As you can see, the difference between actual size and allocated space (or "size on disk" as Windows puts it) is massive. There's over 700 GB of unused space that is being allocated for nothing at all. 

During installation, the drive (which had 500GB free at the moment) ran out of memory, and installation could not continue. I freed up an extra 400 or so, hoping the allocated space would shrink after the installation is complete, but it did not. What do I do now? Thanks!

[DjBorsch]

I've tried purging and redeploying GTS, as well as deleting the other test collection. After purging deployed mods, the Skyrim folder went to normal size, but the Vortex Mods folder remained inflated (101/454 gb instead of 107/473 since i removed the other collection). After deleting the collection (but keeping downloaded files), the deployment folder went to 0 bytes (as expected). Trying to reinstall now, but it seems to be gradually eating more and more memory again

[Nagev]

Hey @DjBorsch - What you're experiencing is not normal Vortex behaviour. Hardlinks are basically references to the same data within the NTFS partition, it wouldn't cause the overhead you're experiencing in both locations at the same time, especially since Vortex would never even touch the game's mods folder until the end of the collection installation. It could be that you formatted D:\ using a large cluster size, but even then I don't see 230k files occupying more than ~20GB due to inefficient storage allocation.

I'm still running some tests on my end, but the file allocation comes nowhere near what you're experiencing. Are you certain it's Vortex and not an overzealous AV or some other app that is trying to read those files while Vortex is generating them?

[DjBorsch]

I don't think it should be? The only things i'm running at the same time as Vortex are Chrome, Discord and Steam. No AV other than Microsoft Defender, and it isn't flagging anything up.

In case this matters - the drive is a 1TB SSD, partitioned into two discs (C, which is 194 GB, and D, which i'm trying to use for the install, and which Windows shows as having a capacity of 758 GB). I can try installing on a different SSD (not partitioned, 931 GB) tomorrow after freeing some space there

Edit: Come to think of it, it's weird that D has a max capacity of 758 GB according to WIndows, and yet Windows itself clocked the "size on disk" as being almost 1 TB when the collection was installed

 

 

[Nagev]

It really feels like there's some weird cluster allocation issue there. Please do check the other SSD and ping me. Make sure you set a small allocation cluster when you format the other drive - GTS has a lot of small files, so make it 4KB.

[DjBorsch]

@Nagev I checked the cluster sizes for D and E. D is 2048K, which i think is 2MB? That is indeed way over 4KB.  E is 4096, which already should make it 4KB. Will try installing there tomorrow and will let you know how it goes. Thank you!

[aleyyiah]

steam does install files if its over there(downloaded by them), it has a habit installing more it need just in case if it thought steam,since its updating like once in a day, its been crazy lately

just steam map 

Edited April 17 by aleyyiah

[aleyyiah]

@DjBorsch i never did used vortex at all but , u might have some failed download hence of the size. this get saved in pc , mostly framemory but still size matters. (this is like old program u install and its still there) ,how many memory dumps u have of vortex?

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/performance/read-small-memory-dump-file

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-open-and-analyze-dump-error-files-windows-10

symptoms are flash,relay,sudden shutdown of interface then back up and using word pasting takes longer times. if it this try then its ure framerate and u need clean it

eitherway i can give u more links to it or u can just use a cleaner, that fix and update and deteminate aps u dont need to get a clean view. bc as @Nagev says it should not be. vortex is and have been very stabile i dont use but freak as i am i check anyway

[DjBorsch]

I haven't experienced any of these symptoms. The odd file size is the only issue here.
I also don't think it's an issue with the downloads. The size of the download folder is 60gb, which is as expected (55-56 from GTS and the rest if from a few uninstalled downloads for other games). It's the deployment of mods that seems to be causing this issue

[aleyyiah]

@DjBorsch vortex do generate dumps usally in C if u do not choose any other instalition area, this vould be more helpul, i dont know if vortex has auto dump but if anything is wrong it should be there, if u post this to @Nagev  u can use https://pastebin.com/ for for this or https://gist.github.com/

or private but dumpfile is more easy for dev to understand

one should get send when it occurs auto but sometime users is needed

Edited April 17 by aleyyiah