Recent update over 100 GB? Part of Ark?

[=MGC=Ranger 77]

OK, so I cant grasp WTF is going on. I have my Atlas on one hard drive, but the patch is downloading to another (where my Ark is). So my Atlas is on my H drive and I can see the game there ( although the whole folder is only 1.95 GB). I am trying to download and it is saying my E drive is full. I looked on my E drive and it was where Ark is installed, so I uninstalled ark. Still having the issue. I delete the downloading folder (still for some wierd reason in my E drive) and start the process over. Now downloading again and its taking up over a hundred GB of space!!!! not only is that way to big, but its on the wrong drive! Man, for every one thing they fix, they screw 4 more up. Anyone have any ideas? I cant play until I get it fixed and fear my animals and NPC's will  starve soon.

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

Can't speak to the issue of it locating on the wrong drive, but Atlas seems to be having an issue known to cause frustration with Ark, namely that for some technical reason I'm not qualified to explain, the game needs you to space greater than the size of the entire game free, not just the update itself, in order to dl and install updates, which makes no sense, but I have seen it happen numerous times with Ark.

As far as the wrong drive thing, my only guess is once it initially routed it to the wrong drive, it keeps wanting to send it back there until you find a way to direct it specifically to the other drive. Please enjoy the music while someone with greater technical proficiency hopefully sees this thread and offers more substantial help. 

[Martyn 246]

It is a pretty insane and lazy approach to patching a game file.  Esp for those of us who don't have 4 terabyte hdds..

Even tho the downloaded file is only 5.1gb.. the game needed 126gb to reinstall.  It then deleted the older file. So you would have around 115gb original file, plus the 126gb space to reinstall the game.. once it downloaded the 5.1gb.. it takes an hour to reinstall and deletes old file, leaving you with 119 gb file on hdd.  If you don't have that extra 126gb of space.. it won't patch.

Edited June 30, 2019 by Martyn

[Nutcutt3r 173]

It is just using the other drive because the one does not have enough space. It is what it is, hd are cheap, and it has never changed through ARK, although I think its a Steam thing as well.

[Whitehawk 382]

Mine was 40gb in total and took a long time,also it definitely is the ark dlc ocean menu.It was worth the wait though.I'm glad they did it tbh. 

[Ironsides141 0]

I have 400gb free space and the update keeps saying not enough space for a 7.9gb update. I'm also using E drive and ark is not installed.

[=MGC=Ranger 77]

On 6/30/2019 at 2:35 PM, Nutcutt3r said:

It is just using the other drive because the one does not have enough space. It is what it is, hd are cheap, and it has never changed through ARK, although I think its a Steam thing as well.

No, it wasn't running out of space where atlas was (my H drive), that drive had 140 GB free. For some reason, it was downloading the patch to the E hard drive where Ark was installed. It was creating a folder called Downloading and putting it in there. Now, I am an IT professional by trade and know my way around a PC and in my 22 years of experience I have never seen anything like this.      

Now there is an update to this dilemma. I completely UNINSTALLED the game and reinstalled it. This completely fixed the issue. About the only thing I can think of is that Atlas was at one point an Ark mod or had some files in common which the install batch file was pointing to. Doesn't make sense considering the install directory was the H drive, but lets face it, there is nothing normal about how this game has been done lol. 

It is just using the other drive because the one does not have enough space. It is what it is, hd are cheap, and it has never changed through ARK, although I think its a Steam thing as well.

Yeah I know HDD are cheap, I have 6 of them lol. Point is something is wrong if a game thats only 40 GB takes over 120 GB of space for a download. No one should have to have over 200 GB free on a HDD for a game that only takes up 40. Thats just poor programming.

Edited July 1, 2019 by =MGC=Ranger
add second quote and answer

[Nutcutt3r 173]

Well my game is 120 gb sounds awfull close to 140...

[Whitehawk 382]

I could be wrong here but I believe it removes the entire game in some way whilst redownloading it with the updates installed.sounds crazy but thats how it seems to do it,Also the single player mode IS the dlc ocean menu that was intended for ark,it says ocean in the menu.It will download eventually,mine took all evening and it was well worth the wait,even with the odd glitch here and there.