The Sims 3 Complete Colletion :: how many GB should it take?

Hello all,

Unable to play The Sims 2, I decided to try The Sims 3. What I'm noticing though, is that it takes up a LOT of space, like an ubnormal amount of space! I'm talking about the base game here, I had 60 GB of free space before installing it (or something around that) now it's like 40. Again, BASE GAME only, I don't even want to imagine the weight of the expansions all together now. And the crack to update it, oh my god, that one's enormous as well! 

I don't think it's fine when a base game and its update take up so much space, so I'm probably doing something wrong. The question is: what exactly am I doing wrong? I'm literally just following the instructions, what is happening here?? 

Thank you so much!

itsCat wrote:Hello all,

Unable to play The Sims 2, I decided to try The Sims 3. What I'm noticing though, is that it takes up a LOT of space, like an ubnormal amount of space! I'm talking about the base game here, I had 60 GB of free space before installing it (or something around that) now it's like 40. Again, BASE GAME only, I don't even want to imagine the weight of the expansions all together now. And the crack to update it, oh my god, that one's enormous as well! 

I don't think it's fine when a base game and its update take up so much space, so I'm probably doing something wrong. The question is: what exactly am I doing wrong? I'm literally just following the instructions, what is happening here?? 

Thank you so much!

That is one of the disadvantages of using compressed archives, like .rar, for downloads. Though that doesn't happen often, to be fair. Try going under C:\Users\(your Windows account name!!)\AppData\Local\Temp.

Delete ALL files inside that "Temp"-folder and see how much if any space it frees up.

A word of caution, even though I don't think you actually did this. But it's possible that you can "bloat" your hard-drive by interrupting the extraction process with WinRAR. If you do use WinRAR, make sure to let the program extract until the end, even if it seems to take time.

Good luck!

Deleting all the files inside "Temp" actually freed a lot of space, thank you. But what do you mean it doesn't happen often, is there any way I can prevent it from happening? I'm asking because even though deleting the files helped, filling more than 20 GB with just the base game sounds like such a huge waste of space to me...
And in case I've bloated my hard-drive (pretty sure I didn't interrupt the extraction with WinRAR, but you never know!) how do I debloat it? If this question makes any sense 

Why not download The Sims 3 via Zclient/ZLOrigin ?
see HERE

itsCat wrote:And in case I've bloated my hard-drive (pretty sure I didn't interrupt the extraction with WinRAR, but you never know!) how do I debloat it? If this question makes any sense 

Sure it makes sense, but then again I already gave you a possible remedy in my previous reply: try not to interrupt the extraction process with WinRAR. And make sure to empty the Temp-folder in regular intervals. Then you should be fine.

Tarac wrote:Why not download The Sims 3 via Zclient/ZLOrigin ?
see HERE

Maybe because the OP already installed the base game of The Sims 3, and it doesn't make much sense to un-install that game just because you think that the G4TW release is so awfully bad?

The TS was wondering about the file size.
The total amount on disk after installation of all EP's and SP's is 31,9 GB
Advantage of ZLOrigin is that there is no additional diskspace required for the downloaded Winrar file
Disadvantage: You must always play online as a crack won't work (yet).

Sorry it took a while, I was fixing a few more things and didn't want to take advantage of this thread while I could find what else I needed in the others 
Thank you, both of you, I'm sure that the second method could've worked as well. Still, I decided to stick with the first one and I'm pleased to say PROBLEM SOLVED! Looks like I just seriously bloated my hard-drive by mistake earlier, now I feel stupid  Thanks again!

Tarac wrote:Disadvantage: You must always play online as a crack won't work (yet).

I would actually argue that this is the smallest of all disadvantages. More problematic are incompatibilities with many mods, and the things mentioned here:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=567333

OK, the thing with the "performance drop" might be relevant for weak/old computers only. But still, I would not use this 1.69 version. I still also believe the main purpose it was released (long after the end of The Sims 3), was to make it more difficult for the people who mixed legal DLCs with non-legal versions.