Steam help

Gaming
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1

ok i dont have the largest ssd in the world but i have a few games on it. i tried to uninstall them inside of steam so i can download another and it does not free up any space on my hard drive. kinda lost on where to go. oooo btw im using ubuntu 20.04

2

Delete the folders that has the files for the game? not the most elegant solution but would get rid of the majority of the game, not sure on what remnants would be left.

3

Steam doesnt store your data. Did you remove the games using Add or Remove Programs?

Also SSDs are fairly cheap. You could get a fairly cheap SSD to add to your case as well. Probably around $50 or 60.

4

i have a 256 samsung ssd and a one 1tb seagate in my case and i got zfs on ubuntu 20.04 but im not sure how to add the disk or anything so im in the learning process.

5

I’m not sure why steam wouldn’t be freeing up the space. I just tested it on my computer. Installed a game, then uninstalled it all via steam and it freed the space back up.
Steam stores your games install files in ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/ It may be different for proton games. Deleting things here will not remove shortcuts and will remove your saved game data.

You can use the “Disk Usage Analyzer” tool to help find where steam is storing things (and you might also find other large folders/files you forgot you had).

It also looks like steam also has a tool to spread its files across multiple drives/directories. “Steam Library Folders” in Settings -> Downloads. I’m not sure how it works and have not used it, just noticed it today.

I don’t have much experience with zfs so I can’t help on the commands to grow the pool. There are others on here with more experience and there are some good guides online for zfs if you are familiar with the terminal.
One thing to note, if you only have the one 256gb ssd in the pool and you want to add another ssd to gain capacity, zfs will stripe the data across the drives and you end up in a case where if either ssd fails you loose the data on both. If you back up your data regularly, then it might not be a concern for you.