Spore taking up 12GB!?

[Dreadicon]

OK, so I have my computer set up with a single drive partitioned into a 20GB and a 211GB drive. Windows and essential functions on the 20GB drive, everything else on the other. I noticed Spore was refusing to load after a while, and as it turns out, Spore saves a large file to the Application Data folder, approximately 2GB on my computer. "OK" i said, "I guess I can roll with that..." so I free up more space on the Windows partition. But in doing so, I realize something: my windows folder jumped from 4GB to almost 10GB!!!

After much digging, i found a bunch of .exe files in the Windows32 folder, bearing the Spore Icon, with Maxis data attached. These files total at a whopping 5.5GB, which is way too big for my tiny windows partition. the files are all "xa~~~~.exe", and about 38MB in size each. The numbers following "xa" range from 5 to 9 digits.

I have never gone online with Spore other than when i first bought it back when it came out, so i doubt it was additional content downloaded, and i use mostly preset buildings/vehicles, and only have like 5 creatures. Is it just me, or does Spore actually take up a total of over 12GB!? If so, is there any way to shunt the files from Application Data over to another drive other than the one Windows is installed on? I mostly just want to know if these files are from Spore, and if so, is it necessary to uninstall it before they can be removed, or if uninstalling it would even remove them?

NOTE: in hindsight, 20GB was far too small for the Windows drive, but i never realized back then how much MUST be put on the stupid windows HDD. Now i would have to reformat my HDD to fix it, so i don't want to do that....

 

[Belinda]

I don't know anything about your Spore problem but i do know that you don't need to reformat. There are applications that resize partitions easily.
Partition Magic springs to mind.

 

[13thmonkey]

disk cleanup will get rid of most of those files, i'm having similar troubles trying to run vista HP off a 30Gb SSD,

 

[13thmonkey]

I've got another 30Gb ssd (ocz solids £50ea at scan) and a pair of 500's and a 320, its just a pain being limited to 30GB on the OS disk due to these temp files, i've moved everything off it, including pointing the temp file to a different disk, but still it insists on dumping everyting onto the C:.

Might raid the ssd's together and put a proper backup regieme in place. was hoping to not do that.

 

[Dreadicon]

Really? I didn't know Partition Magic was that good. I used it to set up my partitions, but i thought it, like all other partitioners I've tried, would wipe out some or all of the data on the other partition...
Thanks for the help, I'm still a bit baffled about Spore's 6GB claim for the amount of space needed, which is from what I've seen a gross understatement.