Steam Games And SSD's

sas30uk · 28 Jan 2011 at 02:23

Hi guys

Im maybe thinking of getting a 60+GB SSD but i also want to store some of my steam games on there, the problem being i have over 250GB of steam games and do not have the cash for a SSD close to that size.

Is there a way to put some steam games as well as windows 7 on the SSD while leaving the other steam games on the regular HDD ?

Sorry for the noob question but i dont know anything at all about SSD's apart from they are a lot faster than a HDD

Any help would be much appreciated before i go ahead and buy.

Thanks

FlukeRogi · 28 Jan 2011 at 02:35

Quite a common question actually

There are two ways. Manually, you can use the mklink command to create a symbolic link - this effectively lets you move a folder to another location without confusing any programs that access that folder (Steam in this case).

However, the easiest way is probably to use the util that was posted in this thread. It basically automates the process for you.

sas30uk · 28 Jan 2011 at 02:42

Thanks mate will bookmark that right now

boosfuk · 28 Jan 2011 at 09:28

Additionally do you really need 250GB of games installed at once. Steam has a very good backup/restore function that means you can backup (and easily restore) games you re not currently playing to a normal HDD. I use a combination of this and the symbolic link method above.

AWPC · 28 Jan 2011 at 09:41

sas30uk said:
Hi guys

Im maybe thinking of getting a 60+GB SSD but i also want to store some of my steam games on there, the problem being i have over 250GB of steam games and do not have the cash for a SSD close to that size.

Is there a way to put some steam games as well as windows 7 on the SSD while leaving the other steam games on the regular HDD ?

Sorry for the noob question but i dont know anything at all about SSD's apart from they are a lot faster than a HDD

Any help would be much appreciated before i go ahead and buy.

Thanks

What you need to know about SSD's is that the vast majority of PC games will not benefit from being installed to one unless the game has lots of small files (most modern games have several massive data files which see no real world benefits from SSD's).

This is because most SSD's do not handle large files any better than traditional HD's right now so its a waste of money to buy an SSD just for games outside of benchmarks you will not notice hardly any difference on most games unfortunately.

FlukeRogi · 28 Jan 2011 at 10:46

boosfuk said:
Additionally do you really need 250GB of games installed at once. Steam has a very good backup/restore function that means you can backup (and easily restore) games you re not currently playing to a normal HDD. I use a combination of this and the symbolic link method above.

Bit confused there - you backup games you're not playing to a HDD? Why not just keep them installed and instantly playable on a HDD?

Devrij · 28 Jan 2011 at 10:57

FlukeRogi said:
Bit confused there - you backup games you're not playing to a HDD? Why not just keep them installed and instantly playable on a HDD?

That way, you can have Steam installed on your SSD and just install or remove games whenever you feel like playing them. It's good for people who play a few games regularly and want to save space on their smaller and faster drives. Not so good for people who play lots of games all the time. Mklink is better for that.

sas30uk · 28 Jan 2011 at 11:49

The games i play mostly are Black Ops, BFBC2, & Dawn Of War 2. Do you think it would just be a waste of time me getting one for windows 7 and the games i mentioned ?

Thanks.

FlukeRogi · 28 Jan 2011 at 12:08

Devrij said:
That way, you can have Steam installed on your SSD and just install or remove games whenever you feel like playing them. It's good for people who play a few games regularly and want to save space on their smaller and faster drives. Not so good for people who play lots of games all the time. Mklink is better for that.

I have Steam installed to a HDD, but use mklink to move some games to my SSD. In this respect, all my games are installed.

That other post sounded like he was backing games up (as in archiving them) rather than just having them actually installed.

Bubo · 28 Jan 2011 at 12:25

FlukeRogi said:
I have Steam installed to a HDD, but use mklink to move some games to my SSD. In this respect, all my games are installed.

That other post sounded like he was backing games up (as in archiving them) rather than just having them actually installed.

This is how I imagined it working best. I posted this in that thread mentioned in post #2 and some dude scoffed at me saying everyone did this anyway, which is clearly not the case.

FlukeRogi · 28 Jan 2011 at 17:03

Bubo said:
This is how I imagined it working best. I posted this in that thread mentioned in post #2 and some dude scoffed at me saying everyone did this anyway, which is clearly not the case.

Indeed. If you install Steam itself to the SSD, then you have the hassle of having to either move the majority of games with mklink (assuming you have a large collection of games) to a HDD, or you would have to actually archive games.