Steam Gamers? Can't Install Game...

I am running Vista, and have about 6 Gig of free space on this hard drive. When I try to install a new game from the Steam site, it tells me that I only have 6426MB of disk space available, and it requires more.

An internet search indicates that I'm not the only one with this problem, but I can't find a solution posted anywhere. Anybody have any ideas?

 

Steam needs more than that amount because it needs to buffer and caches files during download and install, so if you are trying to install a 6GB game, having 6GB free is not nearly enough.

How big is your hard drive and why on earth do you have so little space om it? That can lead to problems in Windows, and is something you need to look at and fix, the sooner the better. Windows needs a certain amount of open space for its own needs.

I'll ask a mod if they think this belongs in the game forum.

 

Moved to gaming forum to receive a more appropriate response

 

Seconding Mimsy, you just don't have enough space- all your programs need 'wiggle room' above and beyond the space they physically take up on your drive. Also, like she said, it's a bad idea functionally to have a drive that's too full. I don't know that there's a hard and fast rule of thumb on how much space to leave open, but I usually tell people to leave about that last 10% free space alone for the smaller drives- there's not much sense of course in leaving 100gb free on a 1000gb drive but you get the idea.

Hard drives aren't terribly expensive anymore- here is a 160gb hdd for less than $50 after all is said and done with tax and shipping costs that would hold over a dozen modern games no problem. Personally, I like to keep 1 hdd that has my main OS installed on it and then another with games and movies and the like.

 

Not only do you need more space, you need lots of it. If you ever hope to defrag that drive, you need 15 percent of it free to do it correctly, otherwise it will never defrag.

And like scooby and mimsy said, all games need more than just the stated room on the HDD.

Hell, 1TB drives are now going for about 100bucks or even less.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...TC-Froogle-_-Hard+Drives-_-Seagate-_-22148433

 

I know this is late - but thanks to all of you. I'm upgrading the drive now that I've come into a little extra cash.

 

That'll help you with more than Steam games.

And you're welcome. Feel free to return if you have any Steam questions, and we'll help you with that as well. It's what we're here for.