I've got a 128GB SSD on order and on my current installation I have a lot of games installed which would far exceed the capcity of the 128GB SSD. I was wondering if it is possible to have some Steam games which I play a lot installed on the SSD and the others which I don't play as much but would like to keep installed installed on my existing HDD (which I will keep for media and other stuff which won't fit on the SSD)?
Installing Steam games to different directories
- Thread starter Mailman86
- Start date
Hmm I would rather have it all like I have now i.e. one instance of Steam can access all games. But if that is the only way then that seems better than nothing.
I'm convinced though that there must be a way of tricking Windows in to thinking a certain area of another disk is actually on the current disk if you see what I mean. Sort of like having a shortcut on your primary disk to a location on your secondary disk. In theory it sounds perfectly doable but I don't know whether you could do this all inside Windows itself and use the tools it offers (drive mapping or something maybe?) or would a third party application be needed (if one exists).
I'm convinced though that there must be a way of tricking Windows in to thinking a certain area of another disk is actually on the current disk if you see what I mean. Sort of like having a shortcut on your primary disk to a location on your secondary disk. In theory it sounds perfectly doable but I don't know whether you could do this all inside Windows itself and use the tools it offers (drive mapping or something maybe?) or would a third party application be needed (if one exists).
I've had a quick go with that mklink command and it seems to work from what I can tell!
I haven't got another disk in my computer to really test it, but I moved a game folder to my desktop and created a symbolic link using the mklink command and placed it where the original folder was. It seems you need the /d option if you are creating a symbolic link for a folder (you don't need to bother if you are doing for an individual file I believe). I didn't bother with the /j option so I'm not quite sure what the actual difference is.
So what I typed was:
mklink /d symboliclinkname locationofgamefolder
That then places the link in the folder you are currently in.
I haven't tested it for individual files or put the files on a seperate disk but I don't see why either of those reasons should make a difference. I shall do a bit more testing tomorrow, but it looks good!
Cheers ChileanLlama!
I haven't got another disk in my computer to really test it, but I moved a game folder to my desktop and created a symbolic link using the mklink command and placed it where the original folder was. It seems you need the /d option if you are creating a symbolic link for a folder (you don't need to bother if you are doing for an individual file I believe). I didn't bother with the /j option so I'm not quite sure what the actual difference is.
So what I typed was:
mklink /d symboliclinkname locationofgamefolder
That then places the link in the folder you are currently in.
I haven't tested it for individual files or put the files on a seperate disk but I don't see why either of those reasons should make a difference. I shall do a bit more testing tomorrow, but it looks good!
Cheers ChileanLlama!
Last edited:
When typing directory or file names in the command prompt, I always use tab completion to ensure I'm getting exactly what I want. So for example if I wanted to change directory to Program Files, I would type the P and the r and then press tab until the name I want appears. It will also add in quotes for you if you are trying to access a file/directory with a space too e.g typing Pr and then pressing tab once or twice will give you "Program Files".