Running steam games from a Network location

easyrider

easyrider

easyrider

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Running Steam from a LAN gives you several advantages:

1. Won't eat up you local disk space
2. You can run the same installation from multiple machines without having to install on each computer
3. You can reformat a machine, and easily get steam back without doing a full installation.

First thing you do is Plug in an external HDD or use a second system disk if you have one.

Create a folder called Steam on the drive ( take note of the drive letter) For example mine was F:

Next Map Folder from your WHS for example mine is: \\server\software\games\steam and assign it a drive letter e.g. Z:

You should now have 3 drives in your system

At this point DO NOT install any games, ONLY install Steam. And install it on the external drive in the steam folder

Again we install Steam (but no games) onto local drive F: After the install completes, shut down steam,

Now remap local drive F: to Z: , and LAN drive Z: to F:

Now copy (or move) the entire contents of the Steam installation from external drive Z: onto LAN drive F: , be sure to preserve the folders so the configuration does not change. It has to be the same folder structure

Once the copy (or move) is complete you can fire up Steam directly from the LAN drive, and from there you can safely install the games and run them.

I have tried this and it works...As a test I downloaded Lost Coast and played it fine however make sure your LAN Steam share has Read only Properties unchecked before you click on the steam.exe file to open steam and play games

Note: I have a Gigabit connection and would only suggest doing this if you have nice speeds to and from your server

If you like this thread then rate it :D

Cheers


easyrider
 
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I would love to know this, also, is there any performance hit in games where a difference is noticeable?

Especially in the age of SSD.
I get 85-100 Mb/s from my server, Of course access times will suffer, but does that matter!
 
Managed it :D

Just doing some testing now If everything works then I will report back.

Juts about to install Lost Coast and its saying free space is 1.2TB so I guess I may have cracked it. :)

I doubt it on a gigabit connection..In fact it could be faster than a 7200 Drive...

Leave it with me

The beauty of this too is that it can be accessed from any PC on the network without installing steam on the local machine....Plus PC's can be formatted with out hassle as the steam directory is safe.

Fingers crossed

I'll be back! :p
 
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easyrider said:
The beauty of this too is that it can be accessed from any PC on the network without installing steam on the local machine....Plus PC's can be formatted with out hassle as the steam directory is safe.
Click to expand...

Are you saying you have a steam directory on your network, that you can create a shortcut to on two separate computers, each of which uses it as if steam was installed locally?

I doubt that would work myself, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong because I could use that.
 
MeMeMeMe said:
I doubt that would work myself, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong because I could use that.
Click to expand...

It'd work just fine with symlinks. I currently use symlinks to link steam-apps from my SSD to my HD, the same procedure can be used for network shares.
 
MeMeMeMe said:
Are you saying you have a steam directory on your network, that you can create a shortcut to on two separate computers, each of which uses it as if steam was installed locally?

I doubt that would work myself, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong because I could use that.
Click to expand...

You calling me a liar? :p
 
easyrider said:
You calling me a liar? :p
Click to expand...

Maybe... :)

I have no doubt you can run steam from a network location. I've done it myself, using a simple mapped drive - no need to bother with symlinks. Edit: I see you just used mapped drives, though isn't your method a bit more convoluted than it needs to be? Couldn't you just do:
Step 1: map a network drive to your pc
Step 2: install steam on that network drive
Step 3: done.
??

The question I had was can you have the same steam folder installed in two different computers.
For instance, steam is on my NAS.
Can I set it up so that I can access that folder from my desktop, and also, access that folder from my laptop (when wired to the network)?

Related question: I remember something about symlinks from the boot drive to another drive causing problems if that second drive becomes missing. If you disconnect your computer from the network, does it still boot okay?
 
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This is a great idea, only thing that worries me though is how is online play? I would imagine there would be a lot of network traffic going in and out of the machine, does this affect pings?
 
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