No, especially since unless you're extracting the installers, there's that very silly /tmp/ folder.

It's talking backup, which the offline installers are for, which is what lgogdownloader & friends scoop up, so of course the size is known beforehand, and I'd be surprised if those tools wouldn't calculate the grand total beforehand.

I think a 12TB HDD is enough to store the complete Gog catalog .

yes it's called a calculator.

Hello, Gogg: A multiplatform game file downloader for GOG

"Additionally, it allows users to perform the following actions:
...
• Calculate the total size of the files to be downloaded (for storage planning)"

Download site
https://github.com/habedi/gogg

Announcement thread
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/gogg_downloader_update_it_has_a_gui_now

With gogrepoc.py, you can run "download" with the --dryrun option so that it pretends to start downloading your shit.

It will give you an accurate number how much your turd weights.

As someone who is actively backing up/archiving over 900 games...this is so far from the truth it isn't funny. I'm at 7TB with just those...and GOG's library is quite a lot more than that.

Titles like Cyberpunk, Baldur's Gate 3 and most of the new titles are near or over 150GB in and of themselves. 5 or 6 of those titles, and you already have reached or exceeded 1Tb.


I'd go no less than a 12 or 16 TB to begin with for immediate access and short-term storage.

As games get bigger, however, storage space is always gonna be an issue.

Hard drives are relatively cheap, but they do get errors, fail, and need to be replaced every few years.

If you've spent thousands of dollars here, you might want to invest in something more archival.

454 game folders = 10 TB, my most curated.
GOG library got between 6000 and 7000 games, dependable on how to "count", but surely in any case above 5000. This is at least 15 times more games, but the size is perhaps 5 times more because many of my games are way above average in size, including mods, and i got some rollbacks.

Expect 50+ TB space for the whole archive without any rollbacks (legacy files quickly will add way more space).

There is no single HDD able to pick it, it will need the biggest one 2 times at least and the biggest is expensive unless someone is a walking coin-machine... because it will easily exceed 1000 USD. However, the games surely will cost many times more than that, even if over 50% games with heavy price cuts gotten (which is a matter of years, because it will take several years to get over 50% of the games with high price cuts, i predict).

Clearly, Musk can not put it on his USB stick, unless he got some "rocket technology" there no one knows about.

Of course, if GOG wants to "keep" several rollbacks, at least for Galaxy... then it goes into the several 100 TB category way faster than some of us like to admit.

Another issue: 1 time this space is totally useless because we will need at least 3 backups of it, else the data is prone to say goodbye at some point. So, the true amount is several times higher.

If a HDD for ONE copy costs 1000 USD then 3 copies will cost 3000 USD, this is the HDD cost only, without any other hardware nor software. Sure, prices are relative but i know many rich people who already "run away in fear" if they see a price above 1000.

Just talking about GOG games with many "low data amount" classics involved. On my PS5 the size demand is another league: I got around 60 games there and the size is already at around 3 TB.

On my PS6 i surely will need a 8 TB drive, 4+ 1-2 TB will barely do the trick but on the PS5 only.

Not even close. You can get a 24TB drive for $300. Even if you go for an enterprise-class drive you're still looking at $600.

I put "24tb external HDD" into Amazon, and the first three hits I get stright away was:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Expansion-External-Services-STKP24000400/dp/B0CMV9Q5MT - £449

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Elements-External-compatible-documents/dp/B0D8WF5HY2/ - £489

https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-24TB-Desktop-External-Drive/dp/B07W5V8GC9/ - £599

And that was just Amazons suggestions, not searching from lowest to higest price. So there is probably cheaper ones as well.

Changing it to internal HDD's i see drives for £350 on the first page withoug any filtering.

That took me less than 10 seconds to find out.

And that was just Amazon, which tends to be a little more expensive than the deals you get from specialist computer stores

You people seems to be optimistic, so i do expect a good game preservation. In my book the real costs are pretty accurate to what i said due to many reasons. For example a HDD will not last forever... and many other factors such as a unstable economy. Today the price could be bearable and tomorrow... no one really knows.

Anyway... give it all you got with backing up, as long as somewhat "affordable"!

Keeping in mind this is highly dependent on the contents of the GOG games collection.

Here for example 1 309 games = 3,6TB.
(no extras, Linux installers by default, Windows installers if no Linux ones are provided)

I was already dividing it (my personal ratio) by factor 3, for a realistic "average". Perhaps it is even lower but the games are increasing year after year, amount and average size, so the status quo is really just a status quo.

You are surely a "extreme case" of a high number of games with low data size. Perhaps because you got a huge amount of classics and as good as no mods.

In the most extreme "lowest case" it could be 15 TB for 6500+ games and in the most extreme "highest case" (look at my PS5 data size which is mainly with new franchise titles) it is around 3 TB for 65 games, which would be 300 TB if it would ever go to 6500 in amount (currently not possible, not enough new franchises around). So it can vary by as much as factor 20.

The truth is surely way closer to the "lowest case" because GOG got like 90% classic games. So i would divide those 300 TB by factor 8-10 or something in this direction, which may result into around 30-40 TB. But just as i said, this is with zero mods and zero rollbacks, which is, for me... no realistic value, not even for classics. But it does not change the fact that there is currently no single HDD able to "pick it up".

And of course, no sane human is "pumping a HDD" completely full with data. Even if it may be able to fit into a 30 TB HDD (which is not available for sale outside industry customers) this is no use, as we should at least be 5 TB above, else this HDD is "out of order" in less than a year, makes no sense. Even if we only add the oldest retro games, because full means full... believe me, i know this condition. It will always end up higher than what you "originally" had in mind.

No, I'm quite sure your case is extreme here with 22 GB per game at average. Like wtf.

Mine storage size roughly matches vv221's (it's half of it with half as many games) and many of my games are effectively doubled due to keeping both windows and linux installers, plus in some cases separate installer for Polish language. I also save extras, and some soundtracks or video materials can take a bit of space.