Installing steam games on different harddrives

doggles

doggles

doggles

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Hi

does anyone know if I can install games from steam on separate drives or does it have to be the one steams on?

I.e. steam installed on SSD with Call of duty. C drive

dawn of war installed on D drive?
 
There is a hack you can use, google symbolic links or junction points.

But tbh you might be better off just moving your Steam folder to a larger drive (just make sure steam isn't running, then drag the entire folder to a enw drive, then click steam.exe and steam will update itself automatically)
 
it's not really a hack it's a feature in the newer windows os's.


stolen from another forum till somone here whos done it posts in more detail
Requirements:
-Windows Vista or anything newer
-Administrator Privliges

Basic Idea:

what we are going to do is use the mklink command in the command prompt to "mirror" gcf files that are located on other drives, or even on another computer.

Steps:

1) Take the gcf(s) or folder that you wish to transfer and move it you your desired location.

2) Open command prompt by going to the start menu, clicking on run, typing cmd and clicking ok.

3) In command prompt, type in: mklink "directoryofsteamapps\nameofgcf.gcf" "directoryofyourtransferedgcf/nameofgcf.gcf"

example:

mklink "C:\program files\steam\steamapps\garrysmod.gcf" "D:\files\garrysmod.gcf"

5) have fun =D
Click to expand...


Putting it all on the big hdd sort of misses the point of having an ssd drive :p
 
You could use a program called Junction2Folder, once installed all you do is right click on a folder select junction2folder then select the destination.

Same as mklink but with a nice UI, lol :)
 
Tefal said:
it's not really a hack it's a feature in the newer windows os's.
Click to expand...

I was using the term hack more to suggest you need to be a little bit comfortable fiddling with your OS to go that method. Most people will be better off just moving the folder.

Putting it all on the big hdd sort of misses the point of having an ssd drive :p
Click to expand...

True, but games eat up a lot of hard drive space these days. If I had an SSD, I would keep my games well away from the SSD, just because of the hassle of having to constantly shift around which 2 or 3 I could keep on the SSD.
 
Trox said:
You could use a program called Junction2Folder, once installed all you do is right click on a folder select junction2folder then select the destination.

Same as mklink but with a nice UI, lol :)
Click to expand...

so could I with this keep the steam folder and say one game on my ssd and install the other steam games I have on a mechanical drive? or have I missed the point?
 
MeMeMeMe said:
True, but games eat up a lot of hard drive space these days. If I had an SSD, I would keep my games well away from the SSD, just because of the hassle of having to constantly shift around which 2 or 3 I could keep on the SSD.
Click to expand...

Seems kinds pointless having the SSD though if you're going to avoid it using it :p
 
Kenai said:
Seems kinds pointless having the SSD though if you're going to avoid it using it :p
Click to expand...

im not avoiding using it, just its on 64 gig and can't install on the games i want to on it. a lot of the games i have are fortunatly/un on steam
 
Trox said:
You could use a program called Junction2Folder, once installed all you do is right click on a folder select junction2folder then select the destination.

Same as mklink but with a nice UI, lol :)
Click to expand...
Do you have a link for this Junction2Folder program ??



I tryed searching in google for Junction2Folder and nothing showed up :confused:
 
I did it the other way around myself.

My main Steam install sits on a mechanical HDD, I bought a couple of cheap patriot SSDs and partitioned them, one partition for each game I was planning to run from SSD and then used disk management to mount each partition in the \Steam\steamapps\common\<game name> folder and put the game data files on the root of the SSD drive it was mapped to.
 
I was saying, I wouldn't put steam games on the SSD. On the one hand, it's just too much hassle - I change the games I'm playing regularly every few weeks, but keep all my games installed. I'd be spending more time copying files and messing about with symbolic links than I would playing the games!
On the other, symbolic links aren't intuitive. Lots of people find them too complicated to set up, maintain, and change when they need to be changed.

I was planning to use them for transferring some of my user profile data (especially the windows 7 *appdata* folder) off my windows drive, but found that if you do that, windows update no longer works properly. So there are hidden pitfalls to using symbolic links and junction points that can trip people up.
 
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