Well Samsung in general i rather avoid. The 990 Pro was rather "a test" as i was interested into experiencing the newest drive and it seems pretty performant. Yet, even this drive got the usual "firmware issues", and i already had to update the firmware at the beginning. Perhaps i have to update it another time, it could solve some more issues.

Anyway, between 20 and 30 C seems unrealistic to me, unless they used a new controller for it. Not sure they ever changed the controller to a updated one, but it could be possible. 30 C would mean there is close to no power going through the controller at all, which is only possible if the drive is going into a "standby" or "strong idle" mode... not if the controller is at its fully enabled performance. Still, this is just my logic, i am not a engineer.

if you hit your ambient temperature... it would mean the controller is basically inactive... else simply not possible.

Regarding the "why the small file limit issue": I am NOT against one huge file. However, it would need one huge ZIP file with a SHA 256 redundancy check included. I see it as a good addition to the usual 4 GB offline installers. Because so far i got the issue of being unable to have a single ZIP folder with a redundancy check included. So i need to create a own ZIP archive and produce my own SHA 256 values, because it simply does not exist. Not as a SHA 256 nor as a single big ZIP file.

I do not intent to replace the 4 GB file format as i think it got its own uses in many cases. I still find it very useful, for an archive... by adding single file ZIP archives with redundancy check included. So, GOG should simply additionally add a single SHA 256 ZIP for all their offline-installers. It is not to much troubles but very useful for archiving those files! If some people find it a hassle downloading up to 40x 4 TB files... it is as well useful to them. They then simply only need to download the single ZIP file... unzip this file... and then installing it using its content.

Anyway, in term GOG can not be motivated doing so, i simply have to make my own ZIP archive with SHA 256 redundancy checks (out of my own estimated proper value... as i do not know a official value).


Is the current 4 GB format outdated? Yes it is because any modern browser or modern data file system is allowing for way bigger files, but it still got some uses as it is in general more secure for the integrity. I would say for 4 GB files a MD5 is sufficiently secure, but for 100 GB... SHA 256+ is the way to go. Yes it takes time making such a huge check, but it can be optional as usual.

Some people even say "SHA 512 is required"... well this is surely overkill because this is even more demanding and the chance a SHA 256 is failing is close to none. MD5 (the GOG standard for the 4 GB files) is less accurate but rather quick and still... very rarely ever failing.

CRC 32 is very quick but for video only, as they are not sensitive at integrity failures... a video with failed bits can still be played but it may produce artifacts. On games... if there is a single failed bit at a critical spot (other than textures and certain videos) the game can stop to work or becoming very unstable.

That's the OS drive, so there was power going through it. And you see the regular SSD at 24C there. Room temperature may be more like 15C here at the moment, and I do have a side fan aimed at the CPU, and with the NVMe 1 slot right below it, it goes there too.

As for checksums, GOG still refuses to even display them for the installers they do have...

But, again, a single large file would be bad for plenty of reasons, the one problem for lazy people being that there's no way to automate downloading all files in browser, for the offline installers. Or, option B, the installers could be made to check whether all other files are present and, if not, ask whether they should be downloaded, so users could just download the one .exe and, if they decide to allow it to connect, it could do the rest, without the need for Galaxy or any 3rd party tool.

This is the thing i do not enjoy... if people only ask for a single big file because they are lazy.
Still, this is the "big business-model" of Steam... able to provide people with convenience as much as possible and handing out many gimmicks working "out of the box" as it has been attached to their platform.

No doubt, GOG can still improve on many spots... but i do not even think a "single big installer file" would be the most important thing we ever needed. Sure, it got some uses for archiving, but not without a proper redundancy check... as the risk for failures will increase a lot.

And pay to double their current server space. You are correct: GOG will not be convinced to do this. They're more likely to consider dropping the 4gb archives altogether in favour of a singular install file, an approach which has quite a few problems of its own when discounting mere convenience. Or inflating the current file size, perhaps doubling it to 8gb if only to lower the amount of parts some of the newer overinflated titles require.

There is a technical justification for 4 GB, there would have been one for 2 GB, there is none (afaik) for 8 GB, it'd be entirely arbitrary, and people would still complain of the fact that downloading a game's installer requires a number of clicks that they'll make in a few seconds while playing it...

Server space is not the most expensive thing, it is traffic or simply bandwidth, and of course the maintenance... because there are still workers at those servers... so far no bears nor any AI robots (not that i know of but no one knows the future. Servers are a complicated matter; difficult to replace them with robots). Sure, it is not free having even more space but compared to Steam... GOG is not even using 5% of their space... GOGs space is just a "dwarf" compared to what they use. Even a second single file will not change a lot. On top of that, GOG actually already is using several game files but NOT on the offline installers... on GOG Galaxy only... because they offer a rollback of at least 3 versions (as far as i know, never used it). A huge installer file may only add maybe 20% more space... not much more.

Offline-Installers offer no rollback at all... unless someone was able to archive the legacy-files (which i do on certain games, and yes it takes a lot of space but i am just a poor little private person not a company).

8 GB is indeed a "useless format" because there is no real gain apart from offering a bit more convenience for lazy users.

So we got to be reasonable. There is some good use for a single huge ZIP file and there is a use for a 4 GB partition, i told already.

It depends on the problems...
If your only problem is "the story is meh", "there is DEI, we are doomed", "just boring for unknown reason", "the file size is just to small, to many small files", simply stuff without sufficient substance and lacking depth... then indeed it can be hard taking it sufficiently serious as an issue.

Yet, indeed... if a game is just totally buggy, almost or even broken, the story as a whole is a huge mess or totally confusing up to the point of a true broken piece or extremely flat up to the point of creating zero emotion nor any depth; it got tons of translation failures, censorship, and DEI all over the place, and the file-size is over 200 GB for no real reason other than devs being lazy not making some compression for the sake of lesser loading time (on a HDD i guess, SSD is rarely a issue). The installer is that difficult to download... over 100 files and updated every few days with another 100 files.

Simply be reasonable... trying to offer some tolerance. If your problem is "to flat"... "not sufficiently serious"... then yes i may not adapt to it with a high understanding. On the other hand, toward some serious issues that could improve matters a lot, i absolutely am able to offer a lot of understanding.

GOG should really get on with the times already. They really should bump that file size limit to 5GB. I mean, come on, what is this, 1986?

It is much easier to count the total size with 5GB parts than with 4GB parts because multiplication by 4 is considerably harder than 5.

5*8? Pffft, easy, 40.

4*8? Errr, ah, oh, well.... 36? No, 35!!! Oh wait, no, it is just on the tip of my tongue... saliva!

I'm actually glad they did, about 2 years ago I got in my new condo (I bough it and it was still new construction). For about 6 months I was stuck with a mobile connection with a 300GB limit.
It was not super stable so when I tried to download games sometimes I got corrupted parts that I had to download again... well, 4 GB lost was still bad but if I had to download everything again it would have been a lot more GB.
BTW I was able to consume all 300GB every month, and for the last 2-3 days I almost always had to use my other mobile connection (30GB) and I still had to limit myself from downloading everything I wanted to download (sometimes I was going to my parents condo just to download everything I could).
Still at least it was really cheap... I paid 15€ for 300GB + 6€ for 30GB and unlimited call/SMS.
Now I pay 24€ for fiber connection without GB limitations + 3,5€ for 3GB of mobile data and unlimited call/100 SMS (I pay more money but I think it is way better to have unlimited stable connection... and 3GB for me on mobile are more than enough... on that contract I also got like 50GB that do not reset each month of bonus connection because I do my shopping at the supermarket which also offers telephone offers so I'm not really limited in any way).

Unlimited traffic is the most important thing for sure, else it can create a lot of hassles... as the data surely is not becoming smaller.

I do agree of course, for many people with very slow or even unstable connection... and yes there are still a lot of them, it is useful having a small 4 GB partition. One of several reasons it is still useful having this sort of partition.

Agreed - and a similar point applies with media files. As long as the HDD is fast enough for playback (and for UHD video using HEVC, the throughput ceiling is about 95MB/s for HEVC Profile 5 - High Throughput 4:4:4 16 Intra, High Tier), there's little benefit in faster performance (unless you watch everything via fast forward).
This has been a topic of interest since a JEDEC presentation made in 2015:

Anandtech: The Truth About SSD Data Retention
PCWorld: Death and the unplugged SSD: How much you really need to worry about data retention

Assuming the background explanations are correct here, plugging in an SSD periodically doesn't seem likely to help - it would be necessary to read each byte of data stored - and it might be necessary to "refresh" it by reading and then rewriting all the data.

A similar argument applies to spinning discs as well though - magnetic fields do decay over time (this is more of an issue with low-coercitivity floppy disks than high-coercitivity hard disks). However we're probably talking about decades here. Nonetheless for truly long term archival, write-once optical media should be considered - with multiple types of media with periodic test restores to check each backup works for the belt-and-bracers crowd.
The one SSD failure I've had to date was completely out of the blue and resulted in the drive not even being visible on the BIOS screen. I've had sudden HDD failures as well, but not quite as dramatic.

Given the mechanical nature of HDDs, there are more ways to spot impending failures in their SMART statistics (aside from re-allocated sectors and uncorrectable errors, there may also be longer spin-up times, increased spin retry counts or high fly writes) so all other things being equal, an HDD should give more warning of failure than an SSD - as long as SMART monitoring software is used.

As an aside, the best here seems to be Hard Disk Sentinel which checks drives every 10 minutes (by default), tracks the trend in critical SMART statistics to provide a health report and lifespan estimate and provides a variety of tests to check disks and repair damaged sectors. Bizarrely, it also is the only example of software I've come across that requires online activation, that then becomes effectively DRM-free once you activate it (see Ability to purchase without online activation - the last post had a section removed, but it was pointing out that in order to reinstall on a new PC you had to enter your registration key first, click on the Email button, OK the resulting dialog box and then load the keyfile).
In fairness, this is more a conflict between convenience and flexibility. If you're making use of offline downloads, you are already looking at multiple downloads for optional extras like soundtracks, developer videos, strategy guides, etc so why should splitting a large installer be such a big deal?

Of course, GOG could offer the choice of a single huge file and several smaller ones - but isn't that the situation currently? Those focused on convenience (single file, auto updates) can fire up Galaxy while those more concerned on flexibility and control can use the offline option. Having both available as offline is possible, but would doubtless result in support requests from people confused about which file to use (which, on consideration, is probably why GOG hide the offline downloads - to keep them from the "click-before-look" brigade).

Galaxy doesn't exist for my operating system of choice. I'd prefer a Tar.zst or perhaps a simple magnet file. That way, the installers can be whatever size they please, but be properly compressed and transmitted in many pieces. It works for Humble, after all.

Galaxy is not a installer, it is a install... which is not exactly the thing users of backup-installers are looking for.
It does not even offer a file-bound redundancy-check... only if Galaxy is used i assume.