Be aware: game journal files seem to stick around forever

Sighman

Sighman
I just glanced in the journal folder C:\Users\(USERNAME)\Saved Games\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous and found a bunch of game journal files going all the way back to 2016.

They add up to half a gigabyte, all told. But hey, at least I can parse them and discover everything I've done in the game over the past 5-6 years...

{ "timestamp":"2016-10-26T13:39:08Z", "event":"MarketBuy", "Type":"coffee", "Count":52, "BuyPrice":938, "TotalCost":48776 }

If you have network logging enabled, these separate log files can hit 65mb plus per day, and they seem to stick around forever too (mine are in C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Elite Dangerous\Products\elite-dangerous-odyssey-64\Logs and also C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Elite Dangerous\Products\elite-dangerous-64\Logs)

Between them mine came to well over a gig, which is a ton of wasted space on an SSD.
 

Treya

Treya
I would be quite miffed if the logs were auto deleted - every now and then I come up with some obscure question that requires having access to my CMDRs history.

Size can be managed by turning on compression for the folder (context menu > properties > advanced). Windows is quite good at doing that on the fly with minimal impact to R/W performance. As for the netlog, that's not as essential as it once was so probably better kept off these days unless requested by support. At least I'm not aware of it containing anything above and beyond the normal log that's useful for normal gameplay.

PS: Why is this in the EDO sub forum?
 

CmdrKull

C
Make sure you turn off the network logging so they done get so large, but you don’t want to lose your logs, they’re actually very useful. First off, they’re represented on the Galaxy Map - this is how the game knows where you’ve been. Second, there’s some amazing visualization tools out there, like the one that will show you every jump you’ve made and turn it into a video.
 

CMDR Sophie Joanne

C
CmdrKull said:
Make sure you turn off the network logging so they done get so large, but you don’t want to lose your logs, they’re actually very useful. First off, they’re represented on the Galaxy Map - this is how the game knows where you’ve been. Second, there’s some amazing visualization tools out there, like the one that will show you every jump you’ve made and turn it into a video.
Click to expand...
any pointers on where I can find this software/tool?
 

gooddoc

gooddoc
I'm now on my 4th laptop used for playing Elite.........if there's one thing that clears all your journal files.....it's a new laptop.

I've made sure that all my old netlog & journal files had been copied onto an external hard drive.....my log files go back to December 2014 launch day:)
 

Sighman

Sighman
Side note: now I want to write a piece of software which parses the log in realtime.
insane golgotha said:
2021 - a GB is nothing. Please don't ever install a COD game....
Click to expand...

Not complaining about a gig, just making people aware that they might be able to free up a gig.

I have 20 tb of storage on this machine with two 4tb drives dedicated to Steam games. However, I keep Elite on my system drive SSD.

Also, if 20-30 of my games used 1 gig in random log files, that's quite a chunk. Never mind 3000 of them.

For the record, every Codemasters racing game used to write a 2gb empty video spool file into the user folder - per game. I have F1 2010 through 2021, all the Dirt games, Dirt Rally, etc, so we're talking a design choice that potentially eats 50gb on the system drive. I solved that one by hard-linking the codemasters folder to a larger mechanical drive.

In summary, many companies seem to think their game is the only one installed on a PC. Instead of losing your valuable storage in a death of a thousand cuts, it's worth knowing about some of the worst offenders.
 

Sighman

Sighman
BTW there's a great program out there called SpaceSniffer. It shows an entire drive by storage used, and as you drill down into folders (e.g. Appdata) you can see where it's all gone.
 
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