Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

by addalily
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My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

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I've recently discovered that my Sims 3 Folder is taking up almost 100GB of my storage and it's pretty worrying, I know that's way too much for this game. I was checking my storage before opening the game, and after I opened it. It went down around 10-20GB just from opening it and when I restarted my Mac or tried deleting certain things from the Folder, none of that GB that I lost came back.

 

I've been having to delete a lot of different files, different games I played, to be able to have around 20-40GB so I can play more comfortably without worrying. 

 

My Downloads take up 1.62GB

My Installed Worlds takes up 1.14GB

My Mods folder takes up 501MB

My WordCaches takes up 1.79GB

 

There's nothing else that could be taking up my storage that much. 

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Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

@addalily  The only cause I can think of for this kind of issue is iCloud syncing your files and then redownloading them, over and over and over.  Luckily, you can delete most of what you see.  The game won't even use the files with extra numbers in them, for example TravelDB 36.package is useless because the 36 puts it in an unreadable format.

 

What I would do in this case is trash all the files with an extra number at the end, but don't empty the trash until you're satisfied your game is working normally.  So for example, in your second screenshot, keep the file labeled China_0x0869db4c.nhd, but delete all the other .nhd files that start with China and end with an extra number.  You should end up with just a handful of original files.

 

The next step is to back up the Sims 3 folder, once it's a reasonable size.  Ideally you'd copy it to an external hard drive or cloud storage, but not iCloud, because it's probably causing the issues.  Then go into iCloud settings and disable the automatic syncing of Documents.  This guide is for a different issue, but the relevant settings are the same:

 

https://bluebellflora.com/2017/02/06/sims-3-and-sims-4-not-loading-save-games/

 

When you do this, what may happen is that your copy of the Sims 3 folder will be moved only to cloud storage, leaving nothing in Documents > Electronic Arts.  You'll need to manually move the folder back, after which point it shouldn't sync again.  Then you can disable iCloud entirely if you want.

 

Each time you update your OS, it's possible for iCloud to change its settings on its own, without notifying you.  So after each update, be sure to double-check its settings.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.

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Message 9 of 11 (1,892 Views)

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Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

@addalily  How large is the Saves folder?  How large is DCCache?  What about FeaturedItems?  Everything in that folder can be deleted: the files are thumbnails for store content the game wants to sell you, and you'll get about 100 new files each time you play.  Similarly, everything in DCBackup except for ccmerged.package can be deleted; you only need the other files if you use custom content AND upload to the Exchange AND want that custom content to be included in your uploads.

 

If that's not the issue, please go through the Sims 3 folder one entry at a time and let me know the size of any file or folder larger than 1 GB.  Please also let me know the current total size of the folder.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 2 of 11 (1,965 Views)

Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

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My Saves folder is taking up A LOT of the storage. My DCCache folder is taking up about 775MB. I go back to the FeaturedItems folder often and delete them so that isn't a problem. I've pretty much already deleted everything inside the folder that I do not absolutely need for the Sims 3. 

 

Other than the Folders I've mentioned in my past comment and this one, none of the other folders are taking up over 1GB. 

 

I'm going to go and delete some unused saves that I do not use and see how much that changes my storage intake. 

 

 

 

 

Message 3 of 11 (1,959 Views)

Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

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@puzzlezaddict The save of the current family that I'm playing with is already at almost 14GB. I'm not even on Gen 2 yet.
Message 4 of 11 (1,950 Views)

Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

@addalily  Wow, that's a very large save folder.  What sizes are the files inside the folder?  (I'd love to see a screenshot, for reference, and especially in case this is new behavior for the game.)  Do you have memories enabled, or lots of photos and/or paintings, or do you play the whole town?  And I'm guessing your sims travel a lot?  The save folder will have an .nhd file for each world they've visited.

 

You may want to look into Kuree Save Cleaner to clean up the data.  I think the newest version may not work, but the older one should, and using it mostly just means you'd have to delete data manually rather than letting the tool remove everything automatically.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 5 of 11 (1,941 Views)

Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

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There are around 4 thousand items inside that save folder and from a quick skim of the folder, none of the files go over 1GB. I do not have memories enabled, barely any photos, no paintings. I've only ever played with this specific household and yes, my sims are adventurers so they do travel quite a bit. 

 

I'll look into Kuree Save Cleaner and I'll see how it goes.

Message 6 of 11 (1,934 Views)

Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

@addalily  There should absolutely not be 4k files inside a save folder.  I have no idea how that would happen, unless the game is endlessly replicating some files instead of using the existing ones.  For a given save, there should only be three files plus two per world that the save has seen, something like this:

 

Screen Shot 2021-01-13 at 12.22.50 PM.png

 

(That save was played for around six sim-weeks plus numerous vacations.)

 

Could you post a couple screenshots of your save folder so I see what you have?  Kuree Save Cleaner is meant to clean individual files, not delete duplicates, so I'm not sure it'll help here.

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I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 7 of 11 (1,926 Views)

Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

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They're duplicates that go up to over 100. I have a couple screenshots of examples.

 

TravelDB has files going up to 285.

Meta has files going up to almost 2k.

France_0x0859db50ExportDB files goes up 150.

France_0x0859db50.nhd files go up to 50.

Evansdale County_0x00000000ExportDB files go up to 1.2k.

Evansdale County_0x00000000.nhd goes up to 150. 

 

And pretty much so on.

 

1a5tf1l3.dat has the highest amount of duplicates (almost 3k). It's very common for my files to go way over 100. 

Message 8 of 11 (1,917 Views)

Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

@addalily  The only cause I can think of for this kind of issue is iCloud syncing your files and then redownloading them, over and over and over.  Luckily, you can delete most of what you see.  The game won't even use the files with extra numbers in them, for example TravelDB 36.package is useless because the 36 puts it in an unreadable format.

 

What I would do in this case is trash all the files with an extra number at the end, but don't empty the trash until you're satisfied your game is working normally.  So for example, in your second screenshot, keep the file labeled China_0x0869db4c.nhd, but delete all the other .nhd files that start with China and end with an extra number.  You should end up with just a handful of original files.

 

The next step is to back up the Sims 3 folder, once it's a reasonable size.  Ideally you'd copy it to an external hard drive or cloud storage, but not iCloud, because it's probably causing the issues.  Then go into iCloud settings and disable the automatic syncing of Documents.  This guide is for a different issue, but the relevant settings are the same:

 

https://bluebellflora.com/2017/02/06/sims-3-and-sims-4-not-loading-save-games/

 

When you do this, what may happen is that your copy of the Sims 3 folder will be moved only to cloud storage, leaving nothing in Documents > Electronic Arts.  You'll need to manually move the folder back, after which point it shouldn't sync again.  Then you can disable iCloud entirely if you want.

 

Each time you update your OS, it's possible for iCloud to change its settings on its own, without notifying you.  So after each update, be sure to double-check its settings.

——————————————————————————————————————————

I don't work for EA. I'm just trying to help fellow players with their games.
Message 9 of 11 (1,893 Views)

Re: My Sims 3 taking up way too much storage.

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@puzzlezaddict I play tested a little bit in my save and none of the files got duplicated again so I'm assuming that it fixed. The loading times were also way faster than before.

Thank you!
Message 10 of 11 (1,884 Views)