This thing is one gigabyte and I don’t know what’s on it. Can I delete it? I’m okay with deleting the Outlands if this is what the data.056 is.
Why would you want to delete just that one? The data folder has lots of data.### files in it and they’re all about a gig in size give or take.
2 Likes
Any others that I can delete? I deleted this data file and I think it went and reinstalled it when I tried to play.
The data folder contains required game data, I believe the game checks its data before playing and will reinstall anything missing. I would suspect deleting random data files might corrupt the installation as well.
3 Likes
Thanks for your help, I will probably try to find other stuff to delete. It’s okay to delete screenshots right? Also logs?
screenshots and logs can be deleted. your addons are located in the interface folder, and the wtf folder contains settings for those addons, which you can delete if you choose. The cache folder can also be deleted, but the game will rebuild it fairly quickly. These are mostly pretty small amounts of data though. It is a good idea to keep at least some percent of your hard drive empty, like 10-20%, so if you’re very low on space to where freeing up a few hundred MB might matter, I’d plan on trying to upgrade.
I’m not sure if this is true anymore, but it used to be true that sometimes the game data files themselves would become bloated over years of updating, and doing a fresh reinstall could shrink that folder a bit. I haven’t really heard of anyone advising this lately though. But for example I have just retail installed and my data folder is 72.4gb and my retail folder is 243mb
2 Likes
Hello all I am back again wanted to update you it seems data.056 is an important one but you can delete data.052 and data.017 if you want to and the computer will not get mad at you. You can also delete data.066 but this sometimes will get the computer upset depending on where you go. You also need to open the game from files instead of the launcher or else the launcher will get mad every time you try to update. I hope this helps anyone looking to save some space.
I’d have to recommend against what the poster above me suggested. In their limited experience, deleting random data files from a WoW installation “caused no problems,” but they haven’t checked every single aspect of the game from top to bottom to see where those data files are needed.
@Wild, are you sure your data file deletions don’t cause the southwest corner of Redridge mountains to crash? How bout the last half of ICC? Mogushan Palace? Booty Bay?
You don’t know this, yet problems are a foregone conclusion when you delete data files willy-nilly from your WoW installation.
So, for posterity, I’ll say again, don’t delete random data files from your WoW installation. You will end up with problems down the road if you don’t end up with problems immediately.
If you absolutely, positively need more room on your hard drive, don’t go into folders for your installed programs and randomly start deleting things. Do these things:
- Uninstall other programs besides WoW; or
- Run a disk cleanup utility, which will make room; or
- Buy a larger hard drive.
If your car starts making really weird squeaky noises when you start it up, and the squeakiness increases in pitch when you push the accelerator, then you likely have a bad alternator.
So, that being the case, ripping the belt off the alternator will, indeed, fix the issue so your car doesn’t squeak. You’ll even be able to drive around for a bit, start your car two or three times, and everything will appear normal.
But it clearly isn’t the proper fix, since you’ll be stranded somewhere as soon as your battery runs out of juice. The proper fix was to get the alternator replaced.
Deleting random data files isn’t a fix for anything. You feel free to do you, but please don’t offer this advice as some great way to fix issues with either hard drive space or launcher performance. It’s not only ineffective (notwithstanding your anecdotal evidence) but it’s actually detrimental to the stability of the game.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.