Steam - Multiple Hard Drive Support?

[mnem]

Bump. I just got an SSD and wanted to put my new copy of Skyrim on it for better load times, only to find out Steam is incapable of installing to custom destinations. This is absolutely unacceptable Steam.

[pragzor]

Easy solution.
Run cmd as administrator
and type in:
mklink /d "Steam folder" "Game Folder"

Example:

mklink /d "c:\steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 3" "E:\games\call of duty modern warfare 3"

No need to uninstall games. Just close the steam, then move game folder and create link.

[SandyGunfox]

I have a 1.5TB hard drive dedicated more or less exclusively to Steam (I have a few other minor things on it, but over 90% of the drive is either taken up by Steam or open for it).

I have 255 games according to SteamCalculator.com, and my Steam folder is just a few gigs shy of 900GB. While I'm thankful I can afford to run out and buy a hard drive JUST for Steam, I feel sorry for those that can't.

[CloveFD]

Originally Posted by SuperKeek

Just built a new rig yesterday. Top of the line with an OCZ Agility 120 GB SSD. This SSD has 100 GB after Windows 7 Pro and other essentials. It set me back a good $370 plus tax and I'd like to do a little gaming on it. Now I'm installing Ghostbusters and if I get Dragon Age: Origins and Aion...that's about half the remaining space of the drive. Not to mention the countless games I've already purchased that I simply can't install if I'd like to use this drive.

I could throw my Steam account on my 300 GB VelociRaptor, but I didn't drop all this cash on an SSD for it to sit there.

I got a similar situation, I got a nice 120GB SSD right now thats happily sitting there, being used only for my applications like W7/office/itunes... but it'd be nice to put the Steam on this SSD, make start-up a little bit faster, without messing around with the steam games installing on that SSD -_-

Had to make a 1TB RAID setup with 2 500GB HD's to find the space for all my steam stuff+other stuff :/

[mk3]

I would like this feature also. In fact, I likely won't upgrade to a SSD until it is implemented. I want to be able to have my favorite games on the SSD for quick load times and all my other games on a large HDD so that I can have them all installed.

[wildfire678]

Been asked and answered (numerous times) in this thread mk3

[Ghostdog]

Thanks to those who posted the mklink workaround - just what I was looking for! Imo this thread should be stickied (in fact I'm surprised that this workaround isn't in the relevant section of the Steam support knowledge base).

However I imagine that there are plenty of people who remain unaware of the workaround (or would not feel happy using it anyway). With some installs weighing in at over 20G I can't imagine that Valve hasn't been aware for some time that this is a problem and will ultimately impact their sales as people switch to more flexible distribution methods.

[bassjason]

Why is it not still not possible to specify the location? There must be a logical reason right? Sure there are workarounds, but Steam is the only program I've ever seen that won't let you choose the installation directory.

[Kattmandu]

Originally Posted by Richard M Nixon

and d2d. I like steam, but sometimes they make it hard to stay a satisfied customer.

I guess they need to lose some market share before they will give their customers little things like the ability to throttle downloads or choose where are games are installed.

I friggin hate having to delete games then redownload them a couple of months later when I want to paly them again because my ssd is only 160gb and steam wont let me install them anywhere else.

When I run out of space on my main hard drive I backup installed games that I am currently not playing to an external hard drive using Steams built-in 'Backup and Restore Games' feature. And when I want to go back and finish the game I just restore the game instead of re-downloading and re-installing the game. Depending on the size of the game it could take 5-10 minutes. Better than a 2-3 hour download...

[Fubarbarian]

I'm just gonna refuse to buy games through steam until multiple instal drives are implemented.

[CowsGoMeow]

Posting to show my support for this thread. This is a big issue for people who buy a lot of games on steam (and thereby provide a lot of income to valve). While there is a workaround* there is really no excuse for not having native support. Personally my steam directory is 137GB and I don't even have that many games installed so I feel for the people who have a vast number of games installed.

*That I actually only discovered through this thread, after wanting to do this for years - I was aware of symlinking under Linux and Windows 7 but didn't realise there was support for XP.

[HoriceGump]

I agree with the OP. I have steam installed on an almost full hdd, so I'm pretty limited, as I cant really buy any more games, without uninstalling some I already have.

By not allowing the user to decide which disk to install on, you're potentially limiting sales. That is not a good business model.

[sophof]

This is such an obvious feature, the fact that it is missing has to be due to monopoly and the accompanying laziness. This is exactly why we need competitors for steam, even the best companies start messing up.
There might have been an excuse for this at the start, no more. Especially when so many people require it. Personally I am not really willing to micro-manage every game with the work-around.

[Internal_energy]

Good idea

[Wrevan]

+1

Implement multiple drives support nao.


I've been using NTFS links as a workaround for now but a seamless native solution would of course be better.

All Steam would have to do is give you an optional checkbox for "Choose Storage Location" whenever you install a game then create an identical Steam tree (minus the content for all the other games) on that drive if we don't install on the default one (so that drive could be used on its own in some other computer, along with the game/s we chose to install on it.)

On a new installation of Steam you'd have the option to "Add Storage Locations" and Steam could merge the content from existing Steam folders on other drivers to build your Library.