razorsedge
September 8th, 2010, 09:24 PM
Windows only: If your primary hard drive just isn't large enough to hold all the software you need on a day-to-day basis, then Steam Mover is the perfect tool for the job—assuming you have another storage drive handy.
Steam Mover was originally designed to help hardcore gamers move their downloaded games to other drives, in order to free up space on their primary hard drive. Cheap, huge drives came along and made this less necessary. With the more recent emerging popularity of Solid State Drives (SSDs), this need becomes commonplace again.
Steam Mover works amazingly well on games downloaded through the Steam client (which it was designed for), but as it turns out, it works well with other applications, too. The program's target directory defaults to the applications folder for Steam, but simply change this to the folder containing the applications you wish to move. Once the folder is selected, all of the associated programs will be listed. Steam Mover works by moving all the data in the associated folder to your secondary drive; it then simply makes a link to the new folder you designate for the alternative folder. This means it should work on most applications.
36656
Once you've got the target and destination folder selected, simply select the program(s) you would like to move. Click the right arrow at the bottom of the application, and soon the selected applications will be on the other drive. You can always move the application back to the original drive by clicking the left arrow.
It is important to note that this software is an initial release. The developer makes no guarantee that it will work flawlessly outside of transporting Steam games. In my testing, however, it worked very well, except for a small hiccup when transferring Illustrator and Flash Builder. The issue was easily resolved by copying everything in my new folder back into the original folder, however.
Steam Mover is a free download for Windows 7 and Vista. XP is not supported.
Have you run out of space on your C:\ drive?
Or do you have a super-fast SSD that is too small to hold all your steam games at the same time?
Then try Steam Mover.
Following on from a very interesting post on the Steam forums I've created a little app to make moving the files and creating the junction points much much easier!
Example Use
Here I have my steam folder in the default location, and the application should find that for you. If not, select the \Steam\SteamApps\Common\ folder yourself, and a secondary hard disk D:\, where I have created a folder.
Note that Steam Mover can be used to move any folder around (by changing the Source Path), but for Steam the maximum benefit is in moving individual games from the Common folder.
36657
I simply select a few games I don't play very often, and click the "Right Arrow" button. This fires off a few command line windows - please let them run to completion.
It is using the built-in Windows commands: xcopy, rd, and mklink. If you want to see the exact commands it is running, tick the "I want to run the commands myself" box.
36658
Once finished, you will see that I have moved Left 4 Dead and World of Goo to my D:\ drive, but because of the Junction Points created on the C:\ drive the games continue to work in Steam.
36659
If you want to move games back to your C:\ drive, simply click on the left arrow button.
Pro's
* You can store all your steam games on multiple drives, and they all carry on working! You no longer have to do the install/uninstall shuffle to get enough disk space on drive C:\ for that latest game.
* You can benefit from that fast, but small, SSD drive by only storing the games you regularly play on the SSD, and moving the older games onto a slower larger hard disk. And all games remain playable in steam.
* If you want to see what it's doing and run the commands from the command line yourself, tick the "I want to run the commands myself" box. Note that SteamMover runs commands one at a time, and stops if it gets an error.
Con's
* No warranty. Whatsoever.
* Things may go wrong. I accept no liability of lost files, yadda, yadda. Its moving a lot of files around, without much checking on permissions, so it may not be perfect. It does work fine for me though. If it does break you may have to copy/move files around yourself, restore from a backup, or re-download your steam games. Please leave feedback below if you get an error, and I shall endevour to fix it in the next release.
* Requires Microsoft Windows Vista or Microsoft Windows 7. As I only have Windows 7 myself, I haven't tested it on Vista, but believe it should work. It will NOT work on Windows XP.
* It requires NTFS formatted drives. It will not work with FAT32.
* Junction Points can only relocate complete folders, not individual files. So unfortunately it will not help with the massive .gcf files in the steamapps folder itself (mostly Valve games such as Counter-Strike and the Half-Life series). To those that have asked, I have tried using mklink to create hardlinks, but they do not work to link to another drive - they only provide a shortcut to a file on the same drive.
https://869789182725854870-a-traynier-com-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/traynier.com/www/files/SteamMover_v0_1.zip?attachauth=ANoY7cox_kAeXUkHKJPm6dRLtY0MFi9QrlpU6yzoTfwiDcTBo1cBD55aR6seOnKh2WYGQbmQyETEySLUPzew_kA4ldOXLmIrfwulf8pRlJFwolhTLJPZz8vaYHQpV3q-JpgZ2y07xbuvvdzzmaIagVBeTw3zdMSvlu8sl5NfqqCOzpywGxKYLe1KRA-BOYRny5gPSXIRt8BNoA8oGkUst4g01YnIIB7Gig%3D%3D&attredirects=0&d=1
Steam Mover was originally designed to help hardcore gamers move their downloaded games to other drives, in order to free up space on their primary hard drive. Cheap, huge drives came along and made this less necessary. With the more recent emerging popularity of Solid State Drives (SSDs), this need becomes commonplace again.
Steam Mover works amazingly well on games downloaded through the Steam client (which it was designed for), but as it turns out, it works well with other applications, too. The program's target directory defaults to the applications folder for Steam, but simply change this to the folder containing the applications you wish to move. Once the folder is selected, all of the associated programs will be listed. Steam Mover works by moving all the data in the associated folder to your secondary drive; it then simply makes a link to the new folder you designate for the alternative folder. This means it should work on most applications.
36656
Once you've got the target and destination folder selected, simply select the program(s) you would like to move. Click the right arrow at the bottom of the application, and soon the selected applications will be on the other drive. You can always move the application back to the original drive by clicking the left arrow.
It is important to note that this software is an initial release. The developer makes no guarantee that it will work flawlessly outside of transporting Steam games. In my testing, however, it worked very well, except for a small hiccup when transferring Illustrator and Flash Builder. The issue was easily resolved by copying everything in my new folder back into the original folder, however.
Steam Mover is a free download for Windows 7 and Vista. XP is not supported.
Have you run out of space on your C:\ drive?
Or do you have a super-fast SSD that is too small to hold all your steam games at the same time?
Then try Steam Mover.
Following on from a very interesting post on the Steam forums I've created a little app to make moving the files and creating the junction points much much easier!
Example Use
Here I have my steam folder in the default location, and the application should find that for you. If not, select the \Steam\SteamApps\Common\ folder yourself, and a secondary hard disk D:\, where I have created a folder.
Note that Steam Mover can be used to move any folder around (by changing the Source Path), but for Steam the maximum benefit is in moving individual games from the Common folder.
36657
I simply select a few games I don't play very often, and click the "Right Arrow" button. This fires off a few command line windows - please let them run to completion.
It is using the built-in Windows commands: xcopy, rd, and mklink. If you want to see the exact commands it is running, tick the "I want to run the commands myself" box.
36658
Once finished, you will see that I have moved Left 4 Dead and World of Goo to my D:\ drive, but because of the Junction Points created on the C:\ drive the games continue to work in Steam.
36659
If you want to move games back to your C:\ drive, simply click on the left arrow button.
Pro's
* You can store all your steam games on multiple drives, and they all carry on working! You no longer have to do the install/uninstall shuffle to get enough disk space on drive C:\ for that latest game.
* You can benefit from that fast, but small, SSD drive by only storing the games you regularly play on the SSD, and moving the older games onto a slower larger hard disk. And all games remain playable in steam.
* If you want to see what it's doing and run the commands from the command line yourself, tick the "I want to run the commands myself" box. Note that SteamMover runs commands one at a time, and stops if it gets an error.
Con's
* No warranty. Whatsoever.
* Things may go wrong. I accept no liability of lost files, yadda, yadda. Its moving a lot of files around, without much checking on permissions, so it may not be perfect. It does work fine for me though. If it does break you may have to copy/move files around yourself, restore from a backup, or re-download your steam games. Please leave feedback below if you get an error, and I shall endevour to fix it in the next release.
* Requires Microsoft Windows Vista or Microsoft Windows 7. As I only have Windows 7 myself, I haven't tested it on Vista, but believe it should work. It will NOT work on Windows XP.
* It requires NTFS formatted drives. It will not work with FAT32.
* Junction Points can only relocate complete folders, not individual files. So unfortunately it will not help with the massive .gcf files in the steamapps folder itself (mostly Valve games such as Counter-Strike and the Half-Life series). To those that have asked, I have tried using mklink to create hardlinks, but they do not work to link to another drive - they only provide a shortcut to a file on the same drive.
https://869789182725854870-a-traynier-com-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/traynier.com/www/files/SteamMover_v0_1.zip?attachauth=ANoY7cox_kAeXUkHKJPm6dRLtY0MFi9QrlpU6yzoTfwiDcTBo1cBD55aR6seOnKh2WYGQbmQyETEySLUPzew_kA4ldOXLmIrfwulf8pRlJFwolhTLJPZz8vaYHQpV3q-JpgZ2y07xbuvvdzzmaIagVBeTw3zdMSvlu8sl5NfqqCOzpywGxKYLe1KRA-BOYRny5gPSXIRt8BNoA8oGkUst4g01YnIIB7Gig%3D%3D&attredirects=0&d=1