How to have Steam games installed on multiple hard drives.

I have a 120GB SSD, and that ran out pretty quick. Especially with games like GTA:IV, EFLC, and Mass Effect 2. I found a neat little tool that will do what a Windows 7 command will already do, but has an easy-to-use GUI. It's called Steam Mover. It allows you to have Steam games installed (and working) on another hard drive. In my case, my 1TB storage drive. You just choose where you want them, and the Steam Mover will automatically move the games to that location, and they'll still work. It won't move Valve games (or even show them) though. Give it a shot if you find yourself shuffling games around due to a small primary partition. What would be nicer is if Steam would just incorporate this ability automatically. Steam Mover

 

I know this sounds silly, but the one thing keeping me from buying an SSD is the difficulty I would have managing my 450GB Steam library. Thanks very much for the post, hopefully I can put it to use soon.

 

What do you need a program for you can do this within Steam?
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8794-YPHV-2033

 

That's backing up files, not allowing you to install games on separate drive or partition. All the utility does is sets up symbolic links, but good to have a tool other than do it manually.

I'm hesitant to buy too many more Steam games. I have everything downloaded and my library nears 800GB. I refuse to buy a 2TB just to have my Steam library. It would be nice if Steam would allow you to install to multiple directories without the need to make symbolic links or junctions.

 

Can't you just install the Steam client on a drive that is not the main drive? I am sure you can still run Steam normally, even if it is installed on another drive.

 

You can, but again, if you run out of space, what do you do? I installed Steam and all my Steam games on a 1TB HDD all to itself on my desktop PC. But that will fill up fairly quickly if I buy a dozen or so more games. I may have to bite on a 2TB 7200RPM HDD next time I see one for less than $100. Love to have one of those Hitachi Deskstars.

 

Point Taken. Fortunately I don't have that many games on Steam and I do uninstall ones I don't play that often or at all. However, if you are the kind that likes to keep a library, I can see why.

 

Yeah, call me crazy, but after downloading them all I just want to hang on to them. Makes reinstalling on other machines a lot quicker too.

 

I keep a good chunk of my games, unless they are just terrible and have no replay value. I agree 100% that Steam should incorporate this. I am quite surprised that they haven't.

 

Yes. Both their backup and installation features need a MAJOR overhaul. Using backup feature it does take up considerably less space. Problem is that you capture it without being able to update the backup if there's a patch. Not only that, the games aren't sortable nor are they even in alphabetical order. So if you wanted to backup all of one type of game, or game and its expansions together, it's impossible to find each one. Adding scheduling of backups would be awesome too, not to mention updating backups with patched files automatically.

To be honest, I've thought this for a while. If I had the programming know-how I'd make a third party utility to do just that. I'm sure it would be quite popular.

 

Or you could uninstall some of the games that you don't play.

 

+1
this was my number one annoyance with steam

 

The whole point is that I have spent time and bandwidth to download them, and would rather have them for future installation so I don't have to wait two, three, four hours or more to install again.

If the backup feature was more robust, then I would backup most games and store them elsewhere. But as it stands it would take me dozens of hours to do each game individually, because it requires too much interaction for each backup. If I could spend an hour configuring a schedule and which games to backup to which file, then just let it run, I'd just do that.

 

Even using Steam's built-in backup feature, it still has to download a whole bunch of stuff when I try to restore, which ultimately defeats the purpose of the system. I just copy my steamapps folder to an external hard drive. The only disadvantage is, upon copying the files back to the Steam directory, the games don't show up in the control panel/programs and features for uninstallation. A small trade-off, IMO.

 

Yeah I copy the steamapps folder now too. But if you want to move a few specific games you have to make sure you have all the files required for that game. Usually it's just the game folder and ncf file(s) but not always. Even doing that it sometimes has to download a good chunk of data. Plus it takes up a lot more space than if compressed.

 

I back-up most of my games on a 1TB HDD and mostly DVD as it's a safer alternative coz the external hdd failed on me twice already and had to re-download everything...

 

Well I figure if I have them on my gaming desktop hard drive, and then on my external hard drive, that's duplication right there. I could put them on my Windows Home Server also, but don't care to waste that much space on something I can recreate, just take a long time.

 

when i did it back in the day i used symlinks. i'm not sure if there is an automated process, but using a soft link works just fine.

 

I also do this. When you drop the folder back into steamapps, all you've got to do is tell Steam to reinstall the game. As it does, it will notice all of the files are already there. Steam won't try to re-download all of it. The game then appears in your installed list.

I think this is what you're talking about, but for Windows 7, and with a GUI.

 

My lappy has 2 hard drives in raid and I wanted to move steam from the main program files to its own partition, I swear I moved everything over, renamed one thing and made steam look for it. It took a while to find everything but then it was good to go. Im sure steam doesn't take up that many gigs itself so you could most likely just copy the whole steam file to a hard drive and not have to worry about missing files on re install. Like the other poster said the un instal makes it a pain but theres programs that make sure you've cleaned your hard drive off nicely.

I do believe steam needs to do this aswell, and im not sure about this one im still new to steam but are there games you only get one install? Ive never come across a game like that yet, and I back up my steam but im just curious if there are games in steam that only allow one install.

 

No games have only one install. Some games have a limited number of activations but you can usually recover an activation by uninstalling the game.

 

Ah good to know, makes the Digital Download pill a little easier to swallow.

 

The limited activations are based on the original publisher/developer though and not Steam. So blame the actual publisher and not Steam/Valve. Valve games (Half-Life, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, etc) are pretty much unlimited installs.

 

Thanks for the link to this application. Looks useful, and after a bit more reading I realised that's what could make a small SSD viable. I always install apps to partitions other than C: and move My Documents and such to other partitions, too, but C: still fills up with garbage due to stuff that doesn't allow selecting an installation directory. This app might really help with that.

 

Well as far as just needing to install to a different drive, you can easily install Steam to your D: drive or whatever drive letter you like. That's not a problem. You can even copy your C:\Program Files\Steam folder to wherever, reinstall Steam to that location, and it will maintain all your files.