Hi, so i've been playing the Sims 4 for at least over 5 years now., recently switched over to EA instead of Origin. And this is a bug I've never ran into before. I got the windows laptop I'm using now around a year ago and it has 112 GB storage. But I always try to keep about 25-21 GB storage free. I have 11 expansion packs. And already had these before using this laptop, and never had this issue. So I wanted to play sims yesterday and it needed to update. Normal, has happened a million times before. But when I try to update, it says I don't have enough storage. And I find out this update is taking 19 GB. That's more than double the actual size of the game. I asked a friend about this who only has 2,4 GB free on his Mac laptop, and he could download it just fine. First I thought it might be because I hadn't played in a while, but I've only missed the updates since begin January. I can't play the Sims anymore.Anyone have advice?

@lena_weer It sadly didn't work

hey, I had that problem too, I don't know what it was but when I restarted my laptop and I tried to update it again it worked. so maybe you can try that. I hope this is of some use to you.

I had the same problem, I clicked the “Restart app” in the menu and it worked

@puzzlezaddictI've tried Restart app and App Recovery. Nothing worked.I have 17.7GB free on my hard drive, however when I start downloading and I get the Low disk space pop up window, it goes down to 2-3GB, sometimes only a few hundred MB.This not only shows in the pop up window but in my file explorer too.Kind of annoying that this issue has been reported in several threads in 2 months and it's not being dealt with.

I spent all day trying to free storage to update! I only managed to free 2GB. I finally just restarted the EA app by clicking on the box in the left corner and going to the help bar. Once it refreshed I tried to press the play button to resume downloading the update and I still got the same 20GB message. Then I just clicked on the actual game and it suddenly let me update!

Why does the new sims 4 update take 19 GB of storage?

25 Replies

jolien219
3 years ago
hey, I had that problem too, I don't know what it was but when I restarted my laptop and I tried to update it again it worked. so maybe you can try that. I hope this is of some use to you.
lena_weer
3 years ago
@jolien219 Thanks, i'll try this 🙂
lena_weer
3 years ago
@lena_weer It sadly didn't work
jolien219
3 years ago
oh uhmm do you have any mods? If you have any you can try to put the mod files in your onedrive and then restart your computer (i don't konw of you really have to restart your comuper but i did that and when i tried to update it again it worked and the update finished without issues) So maybe you can try that. I hope this works bc it's a verry annoying issue. bye
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
3 years ago
@lena_weer Please run a dxdiag and attach it to a post.

https://help.ea.com/en/help/pc/how-to-gather-dxdiag-information/

It sounds like the EA App is trying to reserve the size of the entire Sims 4 base game, which is about 19 GB, in order to update, or perhaps even more. Origin used to do this, but that was (mostly) fixed years ago.
lena_weer
3 years ago
Hi here's the dxdiag text file
sims gb bug.txt103 KB
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
3 years ago
@lena_weer Your computer currently has 17.6 GB storage available. While that would normally be enough to install this relatively small update, it appears that the EA App is sometimes budgeting the entire size of the base game for the update, which is larger than your free storage. So try to clear up a little more space, at least 20 GB total. Then clear the EA App's cache:

https://help.ea.com/en/help/faq/clear-cache-to-fix-problems-with-your-games/

and see whether you can download the update.
ewartmark98
3 years ago
I had the same problem, I clicked the “Restart app” in the menu and it worked
anastasijasfg
3 years ago
What app and what menu are you talking about?
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
3 years ago
@anastasijasfg The app in question is the EA App. Click three lines in the upper-left corner of the App window and select Help > Restart app. If that doesn't help, try Help > App Recovery.

If that doesn't work either, please let me know what issue you're seeing.