IK Product Manager - inefficient at managing storage?

[steven77g]

So I've been downloading stuff all day for SampleTank 4 Max v2, and noticed something odd.

IK Product Manager downloads products (software, samples, etc) into the "Downloads Folder" which you can change in the settings. These downloads are zipped.

When the download is completed, the .zip files are extracted into SampleTank 4's "Sound Content" directory. On Windows, these directories are mapped to a Public Documents directory by default, and the mapping can be modified from within the SampleTank's settings. Same goes for other IK Software like SampleTron.

The problem: the .zip files in the IK Product Manager's downloads folder are not deleted after a product is installed.
SampleTron 4 Max v2 comes with 600GB worth of content, but because all the compressed downloads are retained, that's another hundreds of GB worth of occupied space on the hard drive sitting there doing nothing. On an SSD this wears out the write limit too.

I assume this is to satisfy the IK Product Manager client to confirm the products are downloaded and updated. But why can't IK Product Manager check the unzipped files within the application-assigned directories instead? That's how programs like Steam work; they don't keep two copies of the same product on one PC because that is inefficient.

Can I just delete the zipped files in the IK Product Manager's download directory? Will it cause any problems? Like making them more difficult to update.

[DarkStar]

There is no problem.

I think that the reason for keeping the downloaded files was to avoid the hassles met by Native Access users, where the downloaded files were deleted automatically and the users had very little opportunity to archive them.

I suggest backing up those downloaded files (so you will not need to download them again if you need to re-install the library). Then you can delete them from the "OK Product Manager Downloads Folder".

And, if you click your User Name in the IK Product Manager, you will see a "Clear Download Cache" choice.