Solved: Steam Not Enough Disk Space

Question

Why does Steam say I don’t have enough disk space? Yesterday, I bought a game on Steam and when I tried booting it, it showed “You do not have enough disk space available to run this game. Please free up some disk space and then try again.” Anybody helps me? I’m so upset.

- Question from steamcommunity.com

Overview of Steam

Steam, the world’s biggest and most well-known gaming distribution platform, was developed by Valve Corporation for Microsoft Windows in September of 2003. The reason why this platform is named Steam is that its downloading speed is as quick as steam. Over the years, Steam has brought us many good games no matter exclusive or third-party, including CSGO, Dota 2, and PUBG that have attracted millions of players worldwide.

The error of Steam not enough disk space

Although Steam is a great gaming distribution platform, it won’t cover the fact that users still suffer from some bugs and errors of it. One of the most famous is “Steam not enough disk space” error when downloading/installing/playing a game. Although many users report there is indeed much space on the drive, the warning just keeps popping up. It’s literally a big headache because it interrupts whatever you’re doing. Luckily, in the tutorial below, aimed at this very issue, some pragmatic solutions will be given and hopefully, they can help you out.

6 ways to fix Steam not enough disk space

The issue “Steam not enough disk space” is literally disturbing for players around the world and sometimes, the customer service is not so good at providing effective solutions. Luckily, in the following paragraphs, I listed 6 most pragmatic ways that are highly possible to help settle the issue down.

Method 1. Restart PC and Steam

It’s easiest but it doesn’t mean it’s useless. So, let’s start off with this one.

In the case of Steam not enough disk space, it’s always worth shutting down both your PC and Steam and restarting them because some update can affect the core of Steam, thus a restarting process can handle the issue perfectly. Meanwhile, some third-party software can also affect the download or installation of your games and a restart usually prevents these non-essential software from loading and could be exactly what Steam needs.

Method 2. Verify integrity of game files

This is the most common way Steamers use when there is an error occurring and “Steam not enough disk space” is not an exception. As far as we are concerned, most of the games on Steam are very big and usually consist of tens of GB and it’s sometimes inevitable some files can become corrupted.

That being said, verifying the game file integrity can help find out corrupted files, delete them and download them.

1. Shutting down any game that is running on your PC.

2. Once it’s closed, navigate to “Games Library”.

3. Find the problematic game in the game list on the left side.

4. Right-click on it and select “Properties”.

5. Once in options, locate the “LOCAL FILES” tab from the navigation bar

6. Click on “VERIFY INTEGRITY OF GAME FILES” to get started.

Once it’s completed, relaunch the game and see whether you can enter it successfully.

Method 3. Clear download cache

Clearing Steam download cache tends to fix a great number of problems that you might be suffering from.  In the case of “Steam not enough disc space” error, Steam downloads are able to generate excessive download data present in the cache which can cause a lot of glitches. Certain files can become corrupted, broken, or missing and make Steam troublesome.

How to free up disk space on Steam? Thankfully, clearing download cache is usually an effective way to fix many Steam errors.

1. Start Steam and select “Steam” from the top navigation bar.

2. From the dropdown menu, select “Settings”.

3. Select the “Downloads” tab on the left list.

4. Click on “CLEAR DOWNLOAD CACHE” and follow the instructions.

5. Once it’s completed, Steam will restart on its own.

Once Steam restart, try resuming the download or installation and check whether it’s normal now.

Method 4. Check hard drive errors

If there are any issues with your hard drive, then, you will obviously encounter the “Steam not enough disk space” issue. In order to verify the hard drive for bad sectors, let’s follow the tutorial below.

1. Double-click on “This PC” on your desktop.

2. Now, right-click on the drive where you’re installing or downloading your game and click on “Properties”.

3. In the “Properties” wizard, select “Tools”.

4. Click on “Check” under the “Error checking” section.

5. After that, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors option.

6. Last, click on “Start”.

After the process is completed, resume the downloading or installation process to see whether the issue is fixed or not.

Method 5. Run Disk Cleanup

How do I fix Steam not enough disk space? Maybe, when this error appears, there is indeed much less space compared with before. So, in this case, you might as well consider deleting some junk files or unnecessary data from the hard drive. Here, I recommend the free Windows inbuilt cleanup program Disk Cleanup to help get it done. This time, I use C drive for example.

1. In the search box on the taskbar, type “disk cleanup” and hit “ENTER”.

2. Select the drive you want to clean up and hit “OK”.

3. Tick the items you want to delete and hit “OK”.

Wait a few seconds before it’s done

Method 6. Extend the partition with freeware

When there is little space on the disk where the game is installed, the most effective way to fix “Steam not enough disk space” should be extending that partition with third-party freeware. In this case, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard should be your first choice. With it, you’re able to shrink the partition to create unallocated space and then, use it to extend the target drive within only a few steps. Moreover, if you upgrade the software to the Professional edition, you can use its inbuilt App mover to move apps from the drive where Steam is to another drive to free up storage space.

Free download this powerful disk manager software to have a try.

Step 1. Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Then, all disks and partitions will appear on the interface.

Step 2. Right-click on the partition(encrypted partition is also supported) you want to shrink and select “Resize/Move Partition”. 

Step 3. Adjust the length of the green bar to determine the size of the unallocated space by dragging the circles on both sides. After finished, click on “OK”

Step 4. Right-click on the drive where the problematic game is, right-click on it, and select “Merge Partitions”.

Step 5. Tick off the unallocated space and hit “OK” to return to the main interface.

Step 6. Click on “Apply” on the upper left to start the merging process.

In a few seconds, you will notice that the target drive gets much bigger.

Conclusion

How to fix it when the error “Steam not enough disk space” appears? In this tutorial, you’ve learnt both why this happens and how to deal with it in the top 6 ways. I also met this problem before, and what finally helped me out was method 6 – AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. I was so satisfied with the result that I upgraded it to the pro version to enjoy more pragmatic features including splitting partition, quick partitions, and free space allocation.