As gamers, one can never have enough storage space. That’s why I downloaded a free program to find out where I can clear out data junk – and EA had plenty of digital clutter to offer.
In my daily life, I install and uninstall many games. Some I play privately, some I check out professionally to test them or stay up to date. While writing this article, I have 51 games installed – including some indie games that are only a few gigabytes in size.
It’s important to me that when uninstalling a title, nothing remains on the hard drive that I don’t absolutely need. That’s why I downloaded a free program to address potential storage space waste.
A profile or save game can remain, as those usually take a few hundred megabytes to a maximum of 1–2 gigabytes. But 60 GB large files are just too much.
A program to analyze them all!
I finally got a program to analyze my storage media. With such a tool, you can clearly see which folders on your hard drives take up how much space, and then clear up accordingly.
The installation of such a tool had long been on my agenda, and now it was finally time. I chose the TreeSize program in the free version. Alternatively, you can also use WinDirStat. It is also used by MeinMMO’s tech expert Benedikt Schlotmann. There is not a big difference in the functionality of the two programs.
Before I continue, here are the links to the programs for you:
Compared to the storage space display of Windows, programs like TreeSize or WinDirStat offer a more detailed and visual representation of storage space. I can now identify which folders and files consume the most space with large colorful blocks and percentage or GB indications. This allowed me to identify large amounts of data that I wasn’t aware of before, even though I regularly kept an eye on my hard drives in the past with Windows and also through Steam. This makes optimization much more efficient.
Data graveyard of the Kemono
In just a few minutes, I was able to determine with TreeSize that quite a bit of data junk had accumulated. The EA App, along with a game I uninstalled years ago, Wild Hearts, weighed particularly heavily.
- Wild Hearts is a hunting game in the spirit of Monster Hunter, developed in February 2023 by the Japanese studio Koei Tecmo and published by Electronic Arts.
- In the fantasy world of Azuma, inspired by feudal Japan, you hunt creatures known as Kemono. These are once-peaceful monsters filled with the power of nature, now devastating their surroundings.
- The main feature of Wild Hearts is the combat system, which offers a form of live crafting: while fighting the gigantic beasts, you can create structures like huge hammers, walls, and slingshots.
We accompanied Wild Hearts on MeinMMO for a while in 2023, so I also played it for a few hours. However, the hunting game had a difficult standing. MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus mentioned at the time about 5 reasons why Wild Hearts is a flop. And so it quickly disappeared from my hard drive as well – or so I thought.
I played Wild Hearts through the EA App and had already uninstalled it in 2023. Since then, it hasn’t shown up among my installed games. It also didn’t appear in the storage space menu of Windows. However, in TreeSize, I discovered that the entire game with over 62 GB was still on the hard drive – not just a save or profile settings, but the entire game.
EA had stolen around 62 GB of my storage space for almost 3 years.
Of dinos and soldiers – Over 140 GB wasted
However, Wild Hearts and EA were not alone. There were more space-wasting culprits on my hard drive.
- There were still 20 GB of mods from ARC: Survival Evolved installed, which should have been removed with the uninstallation of the dino game – just as the remaining 130 GB of mods were removed.
- The beta of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 still took up around 5 GB due to leftover data, even though the game has not been on the PC for years.
- Also, ARK: Survival Ascended left behind around 5 GB of mod content despite the uninstallation.
- And since I find Ubisoft Connect really terrible and hardly use it, I forgot to uninstall the long-dead XDefiant through the studio’s own launcher. That was also over 50 GB.
Thanks to TreeSize, in just a few minutes, I was able to save over 140 GB of storage space by identifying and deleting forgotten and improperly uninstalled files. And that was reason enough for me to tell you about it in this article. If you want to discover more free programs that can really help you, check this out: 8 free programs you must install on every computer
