Articles on: Troubleshooting - General

"File too large when zipping" ARK:Survival Evolved Servers

When you try and zip a folder and get an error that the file is too large, this means that its hitting the 500mb limit. Under normal circumstances you should not be close to this limit.



After following the instructions below, or these instructions do not correlate to what you're trying to do, please do contact us via support ticket and we can look into it.


When zipping a file, the most common files you would need to compress would be your ShooterGame > Saved folder. As these files are your game saves, and you may want to download a backup or save them to another location.

If you get the "Files too large" error when trying to do this, please follow the below instructions:

Example


Check that you are actually trying to zip the ShooterGame > Saved folder, and not the entire directory (See image above if unsure). To check this, please:

Click file manager
Click on ShooterGame
Click on Saved
Click on Create Zip
If you are sure you want to zip them, click OK. Zipping will keep a copy of the files and folders there, so you can do it when the server is running. To ensure that you are zipping the latest version of your save files, it is recommended to stop the server first.


If you have confirmed that you are zipping the correct folder but are still getting the file too large, go into the "SavedArks" folder. You will see a lot of files, some of them will be in a similar format to "TheIsland_22.06.2015_11.50.39.ark", which follows the formula of MAP_DATE_TIME. These are your hard saves. When zipping your save folder you do not need them all, you only need the most recent few. The older ones will no longer be needed and are just old, depreciated saves.


For Example, lets say you can see 5 days of past save files, delete the oldest 4, and leave the most recent day of saves. This will reduce the size of the folder considerably, and allow you to zip it again.

Updated on: 06/03/2022

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