Limit on CDP size?

Greetings. I am archiving assets off to .cdp files to try to shrink my Data folder. My current strategy is to archive off a given author, then go through and delete any assets that are not packaged, payware, and do not have dependents. But there are some great authors with lots of large assets, and I am getting CDP files as large as 6GB! I just downloaded the 3.6 version of CDPExplorer, and it handled a 2.3GB file with over 3500 assets just fine, but it appears to have trouble with a 6GB file with less than 700 assets (Could not read beyond end of stream, and it lists the assets, but says assets: 0 at the bottom even if I select them all). So, it looks like I will have to split up the large .cdp file, I am just wondering if anyone knows what the size limit is.

I've run into that issue as well with very large CDPs. I've seen CDPs about 1 to 1.5 GB work fine, but anything larger than that gets sketchy.

My suggestion is to create one as large as you think it should be then test it by attempting to reinstall the assets from it. Hint, don't go and delete anything, just reinstall from the CDP! If the assets reinstall, then that CDP is okay. You can then go in and revert any open assets and keep that CDP.

When you are done removing assets, be sure to delete the backups created because you'll have a ton of backed up assets and gain nothing in disk space with your efforts.

Another potential strategy is this:

1. Create a new folder on the desktop or wherever you'd like.
2. Open the content you want for edit
3. Navigate to the editing folder on your userdata
4. Copy and paste the assets you opened for edit into your new folder
5. Whenever you want to reinstall those assets again, you can simply drag the folder you created over content manager and it'll all the assets in the subsequent folders.

I've come across the same issue that John mentioned, and I refrain from packing a CDP that'll go over 1GB.

Thanks to both of you! John, I hadn't even thought about backups, so I appreciate the reminder! GDennish, I had not thought of that strategy either! With the method I am using now, I could probably zip a whole folder of open for edit assets. I am kind of relying on CDP explorer to be able to extract any assets I need from these large cdp files, but I had better not go much over 2GB.