[How To] Cut Your WoW SSD Installation Down to 14GB~ (Updated for MoP!)

[TaintedOne]

Still works as of patch 5.4.7. Thanks! However, your use of the word Navigate had me expecting that the application I just installed was going to prompt me. You should have just said Browse.

Isnt that the same thing?

browse to a folder

navigate to a folder

Kinda weird you took navigate to mean "when prompted"

[elamalaka]

I don't know. I kind of doubt I was the only one that was a little thrown off by the steps. These are more concise.

Thank you though. WoW is running great on SSD.

[glo]

Glad it's working for you! As for word choice, navigate should be the grammatically correct term and is often used in computer literature. Browse refers to an open-ended view of multiple possible destinations or items, navigate refers to a single definitive destination.

[Deleted]

i didn't plan on buying a ssd because i'm broke and i wanted a 256 or larger... however i recently found a 128 gb one for very, very cheap and couldn't resist! this is golden, but in the end i decided to install wow on the SSD and link the screenshots to my HDD. it only has windows and most programs and is used to abouz 50% so no issues there.

[Vermicious]

Luckily prices are coming down drastically with SSD's the past year, so this isn't as much of an issue as it was

[Gaebryel Quintyne]

Can I do this for the WoD beta on my SSD? I could install the whole thing on my SSD since I have enough space but I wanted to see if it could actually work. My concern is that the beta is always going through new builds all the time. Anyway, any input on this be very helpful =).

[fixx]

Can I do this for the WoD beta on my SSD? I could install the whole thing on my SSD since I have enough space but I wanted to see if it could actually work. My concern is that the beta is always going through new builds all the time. Anyway, any input on this be very helpful =).

Yes and no. You can set whole wodbeta\data folder as link elsewhere but not only parts of it like before because the contents of data folder are nowhere even close to what it was before and its impossible to sort the contents based on what might be most or least used.

These instructions have lost their meaning since it was written years ago anyway because SSD prices have fallen dramatically and the write limitations will never be a problem on a gaming computer. If you have enough space on your SSD just use it or you lose the benefit of reducing load times which is the main purpose of buying an SSD in the first place.

[Gaebryel Quintyne]

Yes and no. You can set whole wodbeta\data folder as link elsewhere but not only parts of it like before because the contents of data folder are nowhere even close to what it was before and its impossible to sort the contents based on what might be most or least used.

These instructions have lost their meaning since it was written years ago anyway because SSD prices have fallen dramatically and the write limitations will never be a problem on a gaming computer. If you have enough space on your SSD just use it or you lose the benefit of reducing load times which is the main purpose of buying an SSD in the first place.

Yeah, I thought so initially. Also, I am hoping to buy a 250 GB SSD soon or in the next few months, probably the Samsung one since I have the 128 GB Samsung 830 series one and it works wonderfully.

[HSC8sku1]

Just wanted to stop by and say thank you for this guide. I created an account primarily just to say that. I was playing just a few minutes ago and flying around Pandaria on a kite. The game was very laggy with my hard drive activity light flashing constantly. I don't have much money, so all I have is my old 64GB SSD, which I have Windows installed on. There was a little room left, enough for the MPQ files I figured. It hit me while I was experiencing the lag that maybe I could move the MPQ files and use symlinks to link them back to the WoW folder on my HDD, but wasn't sure if it was possible. Google lead me here and this answered my questions. I also moved my Interface folder and that dramatically decreased my load times for loading into the game or doing a /reload. I was pretty surprised at how much quicker the game loads now and I'm sure the actual ingame experience will be much better too!

[repozs]

nice guide!

[Darklurker]

Very nice guide, thank you.
Do you think it would be possible to pull similar space savings with Diablo 3?

[lockblock]

Very nice guide, thank you.
Do you think it would be possible to pull similar space savings with Diablo 3?

See my reply post near the bottom of page 1 for this thread.

[Darklurker]

See my reply post near the bottom of page 1 for this thread.

Oh, I somehow missed it. Thank you very much.

[glo]

If anyone wants to take this over and update for WoD, please let me know. I haven't been subbed since the last update to OP.

[Arnaiyus]

If anyone wants to take this over and update for WoD, please let me know. I haven't been subbed since the last update to OP.

I just did a clean install yesterday before patch day and the Data folder is now completely different. First screenshot depicts what's inside, second one shows what's inside the data subfolder (where all the size is present).
All the .idx files are 576kb and all the data.0xx files are 1gb except the last one (672mb). The shmem file is 12kb.
I suppose we should just do the links with the data.0xx files...but then again, it's like the whole installation size right there...so I dunno.

[lockblock]

Yup this thread is officially dead unless a future patch starts naming the contents in a similar fashion to mpq.

[fixx]

This thread has been officially dead for few years. Prices of SSDs are low enough to get 120-250GB model to fit in few favourite games just fine.

[Deleted]

Also longevity of SSD today is so high that you don't have to worry about it wearing down.

[glo]

Does anyone know if they're still MPQ files? Hard to tell since the file extensions are simply a numbering system now. If so, I'll go ahead and download the game and dig through them to see which is which.

[fixx]

Does anyone know if they're still MPQ files? Hard to tell since the file extensions are simply a numbering system now. If so, I'll go ahead and download the game and dig through them to see which is which.

Nope. And the game supposedly optimizes the contents of those files so that there's no need for separate cache copies anymore.