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PokeFan10025's avatar
PokeFan10025
4 years ago
Solved

DCCache exceeding 280GB

So I recently realized that my 600GB hard drive was getting full. Now, admittedly 600GB is small, but I've only dedicated Steam games on it and I don't play much Steam games, so I was surprised to se...
pc
technical issues
  • PokeFan10025's avatar
    PokeFan10025
    4 years ago

    Just wanted to say quickly thanks so much for your help Puzzle, you're a lifesaver!

    I've also discovered something that'll be beneficial for anyone who may be experiencing what I had experienced. OneDrive may be the culprit, but it turns out it wasn't for me. In fact, it's actually from my computer itself - File History is a built-in syncing system in the PC. If you search 'File History' on your computer, you'd discover that there are many options like how often and what drives to sync. For me, it was syncing my D drive every hour, hence why it became so full, and why every time I freed up space, it'd be gone within the hour.

    I turned off File History and it's been fine since, but you could alternatively have it sync another drive or change its frequency, perhaps to every month. If it's getting to the point where it's exceeding three digits in GB's though, I'd highly recommend turning it off outright. 


    So, TL;DR - If you've activated OneDrive on your PC, it's probably OneDrive. If you haven't, it's probably File History. But check both to be sure. 

PokeFan10025's avatar
PokeFan10025
4 years ago

I'm not sure what could be duplicating it - I don't have any syncing program on my PC. I use Steam to play Sims 3 so I don't know if they could be syncing my game or something. I also still launch the game with the launcher, and reading online I've seen many people have problems with it, so maybe that could play a part somehow?

I'm also not certain what is original and what isn't. I've attached two screenshots; one of one portion of the .ebc files that are the same size and another ordered from name, which as you could see, shows a whole bunch of dcdb0 named files. Unless the original is the oldest one?

puzzlezaddict's avatar
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
4 years ago

@PokeFan10025  The launcher wouldn't be reading any of the files in your screenshots.  It can only recognize a .dbc or .ebc file labeled dcdbX, where X is a number; anything with a timestamp in parentheses like the ones in your screenshots would just be ignored.  Do you see any files at all like that?  If so, those are the ones to keep, and you can trash the rest.  Since you have so many files to sort through, it might help to systematically remove the ones that do have extra characters in their names and see what's left.

Steam has nothing to do with this issue—many of us, myself included, play through Steam—and I doubt the launcher has anything to do with it either, or we'd see a lot more reports.  The fact that there are timestamps strongly suggests that some service is syncing your files: the timestamps are meant to distinguish among different versions of the same files, i.e. this one was uploaded on April 11, this other one on April 19, etc.

If you're absolutely sure OneDrive hasn't enabled itself behind your back, which it's been known to do on occasion, especially after a Windows update, look through the Task Manager's background processes list for anything that doesn't have a Windows logo.  The point of some processes will be obvious, for example if you have an Nvidia graphics card, you'll see a handful of services with the Nvidia logo, but anything that might belong to a data syncing or backup service or that you don't recognize is worth investigating.

  • PokeFan10025's avatar
    PokeFan10025
    4 years ago

    I probably should've noticed this sooner, but it turns out that we're talking about two Sims 3 documents here; the My Computer -> Documents -> EA -> Sims 3 > DCCache, i.e., the original one is completely fine. It has no timestamps, has the dcdb(X) files that you've mentioned and is only 11.6GB big - so that's the normal one. 

    Turns out the one that is a problem is in File History -> Me -> Data -> C -> Users -> Me -> Documents -> EA etc etc, with 'Me' being a placeholder for my name. 

    And the biggest thing I've discovered is that you're almost certainly right - it was likely my OneDrive. I looked at my task manager and OneDrive was running, albeit it was greyed out with a dash through it and was only using my Network. When I saw that I thought that it must've been off, since I've never activated OneDrive on my desktop, but I then looked into my 'Me' folder from my FileHistory and I've found a OneDrive folder full of configuration setting files. And Lord and behold, some of the timestamps in that folder matched the ones in the File History's DCCache folder. 

    So I guess it has been syncing behind my back despite me never activating it on my desktop. I've ended OneDrive from my task manager so hopefully that's dealt with, but if I'm wrong let me know how I can kill it for good.

    Now that we've (or more like you've) identified the culprit, what should I do with the Sims 3 folder, or frankly, all of the folders in my File History folder? I've looked it at side by side with my Documents folder and it's virtually a carbon copy. 

    • puzzlezaddict's avatar
      puzzlezaddict
      Hero+
      4 years ago

      @PokeFan10025  You can find instructions for uninstalling OneDrive here:

      https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/turn-off-disable-or-uninstall-onedrive-f32a17ce-3336-40fe-9c38-6efb09f944b0

      It's not necessary to uninstall though; you could simply unlink instead.  (I personally never linked in the first place, and OneDrive is still in there somewhere but doesn't interfere.  But when I installed Windows, I specifically created a local account rather than signing into Microsoft.)  Pick the option you like better.

      Once OneDrive is out of the picture, you can simply flush everything in the File History directory that you know you don't want to keep.  So that would be everything in DCCache, and possibly everything in general, but you might consider preserving a few older saves, especially if you don't have backups elsewhere.  These can be copied to an external drive or uploaded to some cloud storage service (Google Drive, Dropbox) that doesn't try to sync your files on its own.

      Since the game will only read the contents of Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 3, deleting files stored elsewhere will have no effect.

      • PokeFan10025's avatar
        PokeFan10025
        4 years ago

        Just wanted to say quickly thanks so much for your help Puzzle, you're a lifesaver!

        I've also discovered something that'll be beneficial for anyone who may be experiencing what I had experienced. OneDrive may be the culprit, but it turns out it wasn't for me. In fact, it's actually from my computer itself - File History is a built-in syncing system in the PC. If you search 'File History' on your computer, you'd discover that there are many options like how often and what drives to sync. For me, it was syncing my D drive every hour, hence why it became so full, and why every time I freed up space, it'd be gone within the hour.

        I turned off File History and it's been fine since, but you could alternatively have it sync another drive or change its frequency, perhaps to every month. If it's getting to the point where it's exceeding three digits in GB's though, I'd highly recommend turning it off outright. 


        So, TL;DR - If you've activated OneDrive on your PC, it's probably OneDrive. If you haven't, it's probably File History. But check both to be sure. 

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