Just need a quick tip on Steam

So my hard drive is full. Like 4 gigs left. So I decided to have my future games to be installed in an external hard drive. So that leaves me with all my installed games in my main computer hard drive.

The fact is, it could well take me at least 6 hours to transfer my games to my external hard drive. Couldn't I just have 2 steamapp folders containing my games and play through both drives?

So far, I moved my steam.exe to my external and it did it's auto update with a whole new steam folder in my external. Right now, Steam only counts the games that are currently in the external hard drive, not including in my computer hard drive. Thanks for any help.

 

I don't believe steam allows you to play from two separate drives. Only one will work and why don't you just delete the games you don't play anymore and just transfer the ones you do play so it takes less time?

 

I wouldn't run any games off an external hard drive. Do you absolutely have to have all your games installed at the same time? The nice thing about Steam is that you can back up a whole game by copying its folder to an external drive, delete the original, then restore the backup any time you want by copying that directory back over.

You might want to consider investing in a larger hard drive. They make 7200 RPM 750 GB drives, or if you're OK with a slower 5400 RPM unit, there now exist 1 TB models that are 9.5mm tall (so they will fit in most any notebook).

Alternatively, you could swap out your optical drive for a new hard drive by using a caddy. You could then buy an external DVD drive or an enclosure in which to install the one you pulled.

 

not sure if it will allow to have 2 app folders. i could be wrong though.
how much of your space is taken up with games and how often do you play all of them.
ive got about 30 steam games but delete most of them when ive finished them and in the future if you want to play them again just re download them. of course your scores will be wiped

 

Not necessarily, as long as you make a backup of the game directory and save files (if they're stored in a different place). No need to re-download anything unless you've missed a file or two, in which case Steam will re-acquire it if you run a cache integrity check.

 

Steam natively doesn't allow more than one games directory which is very annoying... I've got a 750gb drive full of Steam goodies.

But, there is a way to trick it into thinking the second directory is part of the first.... its a windows command to link the two, never done it but saw HTWingnut talking about it a while back.... that's what you are wanting to do it sounds like.... hopefully him or someone else sees this, but yes there is a way.

 

That's a pretty good idea, getting a faster hard drive. I don't know if I could ever swap out my optical drive though, I still play some disc based games.

You got a good point there. Every so often, a friend wants to play with me with some game that I don't play regularly. But, since titles of my interest are coming out, I'll have games I can delete.

 

An external optical drive would make more sense, if you were to go down that road. USB 2.0 is fast enough to handle those data transfers, not for running games off a hard disk.

 

Well, you could always make an iso of the game discs and run the game from the iso with something like powerISO. It might also be possible to run the game from a thumb drive which is something i have been wondering about for a while now. Does anyone know if it is possible to run a game that usually requires a disc by copying the disc to a usb drive?

 

Two Words Shobs

Steam Mover! I used this to transfer my steam games to a secondary hard drive. Valve games won't transfer though.

Steam Mover - traynier.com

 

As mentioned above steam mover does work and would allow you to play on a external drive, if it will play nicely off a external drive is another thing. Also i notice you have a 500gb HD, you should have a 10% overhead at all times so basically 50gb free.

 

I think running your games off an external hard drive is more efficient. There is less load on your main drive and allows your system to process much quicker and games runs a lot smoother.

 

And you have some empirical evidence to back up this assertion, correct? Considering that USB has to poll the CPU, you would be using more system resources to run a game off an external drive.

 

What if it is an ESATA external?

 

If you're hell-bent on running intensive applications from an external drive, eSATA would be the way to do it. I wouldn't even use USB 3.0 as it's still too immature and relies on the CPU.

 

But I heard that steam doesn't do so well when running off of an external hard drive. I remember asking this question before, not sure if it was here on NBR, but people didn't recommend doing it. :/ Just bought my desktop a 750GB 7200RPM HDD for $50~ since HDDs are pretty cheap these days.

 

When I was running off a laptop, Crysis ran much more smoother on an external hard drive rather than it being on my external. I was using usb 2.0 and the only difference I notice was that the load times seem slightly longer but the game ran smooth and fine. When it was in my internal it seem to lag more and exiting a game took longer. Just my observations and from then on I would game from an external HD. I even upgraded to a 7200rpm external HD with esata connected and performance was just fine.

I recommend trying it yourself and it works for online games too. If you see no difference then just go back to what you are use to.

 

Question: do you really need that many games on your internal drive at all times? My advice is to back them all up to an external hard drive and only keep games that you're actually playing on your internal drive. Worst case scenario, it takes 10-15 minutes to transfer a large game via USB 2.0 before you can play it, and you'll free up oodles of hard drive space in the process.

If I can manage a 250GB+ Steam library with a 160GB SSD flying solo in my laptop, you'll be fine.

And incidentally, backing up games is easier and faster by direct file transfer. Steam's backup apparently doesn't really have any advantages, and it takes longer.

 

Hard Drive space hasn't concerned me in a long time ever since I bought this laptop. If I get a game, I just download and forget. And I don't use the Steam backup by the way, I do it by direct file transfer. But I realized how many games I don't play, and it's better to just delete them out of my hard drive

 

So problem solved, then?

I wasn't assuming you used Steam backup, just giving a quick comparison of potential backup methods in case you needed it.