Due to the various versions of World of Warcraft, which regularly receive updates, quite a bit of data garbage accumulates on your hard drive or SSD. It’s time for some spring cleaning!
What kind of data garbage is this? The WoW player Dorovon explains the problem in this post on Reddit: Every time there is a new build for one of the versions of World of Warcraft, Battle.net generates new archive group index files without removing the unnecessary files from older versions.
Due to the now quite large number of WoW versions that are regularly updated, real mountains of data accumulate over time that you actually do not need to play WoW. For example, the “indices” folder, which should be around 250 MB after a fresh installation of the game, can grow to 50 GB or more.
What tip does the player give? Dorovon explains that one should regularly check the installation directory of World of Warcraft and delete the “indices” and “config” folders under “Data”. If you’re unsure, just copy the two folders as a backup elsewhere before deleting them. Make sure to close WoW and Battle.net before deleting.
When you start Battle.net next time, the launcher will recreate the two folders and download the necessary files for them again – they amount to less than 150 MB, so the download should be quick.
Welcome Spring Cleaning for the PC
What does the tip bring in practice? Many WoW players have already taken Dorovon’s advice and report how much storage space they were able to gain from the spring cleaning.
- AnnualSkirt9921 writes on Reddit: “I actually ended up with 344 GB, not MB, but GIGs of log files … dated back to Shadowlands.”
- Dadpurple is also pleased on Reddit about a lot of free space: “I cleared up 170 GB, that’s crazy.”
- Even scud121 finds the tip very useful (via Reddit): “Removed 180 GB of files. My drives thank you.”
- MarkBonker is happy on Reddit that the tip also helps Classic players: “96.8 GB (Cata Classic Player). Thanks for the tip!”
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg from reports of happy WoW players who were able to free up a lot of space on their hard drive or SSD thanks to the tip. It’s no wonder that the post has already received more than 2,100 upvotes and over 200 comments. Speaking of regular updates for WoW: Patch 11.1.5 went live today – here is the overview and the official patch notes.
