About Steam games and "Small" SSD space. (Steam Mover, Salvation?)

[The_Golden_Man]

I'm making this post because I cannot understand the people complaining they have too small space on their SSD's for their Steam folder/games.

Let's say you have a 80GB SSD containing the Steam folder. Of course this is not enough to store 100 games.

But how many games do people really play? My guess is maybe people switch between two or three games for periods, then they move over to other games. Well, a 80GB SSD is enough for at least 10 game installs. Why do people "need" to have all their Steam games installed all the time?! :\

One can even take a backup of the game, within Steam, and store it on a local harddrive. This eliminates the need for downloading it from Steam again. And the savegames are usually stored in My Documents anyway.


Many people claim they need to use their SSD's for harddrive caching, because of the SSD's small size. I just don't understand this. Using a SSD for Harddrive caching will never yield the same performance as a native SSD anyway.

And let's face it, even a 120GB SSD is cheap nowadays. 120GB will suffice for Windows install, programs and many games. Even 80GB will do that.

Why do people need to have more than 10 games installed at once?! How long does it take to reinstall the game from a local backup anyway? :biggrin:

Explain... Can you use that RAMDISK to cache the harddrive??

Is it free? Download link?

Also, does it work well? Experiencing a boost in speed when loading games and appz?

Edit: I just tested Steam Mover, never tried it before. I moved Borderlands, Bioshock 2, Pirates and Skyrim from my 2x80GB (160GB) Intel X25 Gen.1 Raid0 SSD Array (Where I have my Steam folder, and also other games) to my 1TB WD Green Harddrive. It couldn't be easier. Really, I still don't see the problem. If you move a few games you don't play very much, to the harddrive (Using Steam Mover), they can still be played, or even moved back, just as easy as they was moved in the first place.

And I moved these specific games because I don't play them much. I have played 180 hours + in Skyrim, Borderlands and Bioshock 2 I find boring, but Pirates is an old and little game not needing the speed of the Raid0 SSD array. Still I have the possibility to play the games, should I so wish. Either I can run them from the harddrive, or I could move them back to the SSD RAID0 Array. So I really don't see the problem.

An even better solution for people having a huge ammount of Steam games, is to default the Steam folder to a large harddrive, then just use Steam mover to move the games they play the most over to a SSD, when they so wish.

Steam Mover Download link

Regards
The_Golden_Man

 

[CPA]

I'm one of those persons who likes to have his games installed whether I'm playing them or not. Sometimes I just get an urge to play a particular game and if I have to wait for it to install, then most likely I'll just say "meh" and move on.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

I'm one of those persons who likes to have his games installed whether I'm playing them or not. Sometimes I just get an urge to play a particular game and if I have to wait for it to install, then most likely I'll just say "meh" and move on.

How many Steam games do you own, and what is your storage setup for the games/Steam folder?

 

[Beev]

I have a 128gb SSD. I play WoW, so it takes over 20gb. Windows takes up about 20gb these days, so that leaves me with about 80gb. Then I have Starcraft 2 installed, and I have room saved for Diablo 3 too.

I was able to install Borderlands via Steam, but then I wanted to install Skyrim. NOPE! Out of space!

A 128gb SSD is not enough, and Steam's inability to install to other drives drove me to simply put the entire thing on a separate, slower drive.

 

[CPA]

How many Steam games do you own, and what is your storage setup for the games/Steam folder?

I have a 500GB SATA drive and own over 100 games on Steam. Yes, many are not installed, but I can install many more than I could on a 128GB SSD. I also have 2TB drive that I use for non-Steam games. I installed this drive well after I already had Steam installed and a slew of games installed on the 500GB drive. I have a 64GB SSD drive that I use for Win7 and other non-game programs.

 

[IGemini]

I would probably need a 640GB SSD to comfortably fit all the games I have via Steam, local, and hardcopy; while having room for additions. I never kept a local backup of Steam games until WAY after I got my SSD, but I don't really like wasting write cycles shuffling games to it. At the same time, I like how much faster games load on the SSD.

SteamTool is useful for moving games in my catalog to a HDD for the time being, but it'll all go to a SSD when one finally becomes economically viable.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

80 gigs is more like enough for 3-5 games, and it's a huge pain in the ass moving/reinstalling shit to be able to play whatever game I feel like. This isn't 2004 gramps. I started using a program suggested here that creates the junctions or whatever for you so you can have your games split. Really for how old steam is it's somewhat unforgivable that it won't allow you to split across drives by default.

 

[Terzo]

Don't forget that the full 80 gigs isn't going to be available for games, and that games tend to be quite large.

Operating system, virtual machines, office software, and editing software (depending on your professions or hobbies) all add up. Personally, I have 110 gigs installed on my ssd without any games.

That said, it doesn't really matter to me. I generally only play 1 game at a time. I didn't know you can't split steam games across drives (I've always installed games to my mechanical drive). That sucks.

 

[KaOTiK]

I like keeping a lot of games installed so when I feel like playing a certain game I can simply start playing it instead of having to DL/install it again. Though I'm at a point where I have to manage what games I have installed since I have a large Steam library and only have a 1TB driver dedicated to Steam.

 

[Craig234]

I have a 1TB drive for Steam, it's full.

 

[crownjules]

My rig has a 90GB SSD, 150GB Velociraptor, and then 2.5TB of 7200RPM HDD space.

My SSD has the two online games I play the most and care the most about top performance: LoL and TF2. I've got the rest of my online games on the Raptor drive. Single player and old games go on the other drives. Steam Mover allows me to split off my Steam games onto whatever drive I want (the actual app sits on the Raptor).

edit: I have just over 100 Steam games, but I've only got 20 installed right now since I wanted to migrate Steam to the 150GB drive and couldn't transfer all games there before using Steam Mover to junction them. So I just deleted all but the ones I know I'll play on a regular basis. But once I install something, it usually stays installed.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

I only have a few Steam games. A total of 5. Have Steam games and other games installed in my Intel SSD X25 Gen.1 80GBx2 (160GB) Raid 0 Array. Have used up half the Array.

Windows7 and programs is installed in my 160GB Intel SSD X25 Gen.2 drive, which have over half the space free. Also have a 1TB WD Green for storage and backup.

I've already made backups for several of the Steam games, and stored them in my Harddrive.

In a worst case scenario I could use Steam mover, as the man over me stated.

So for me, I don't see any problems. At least not yet.

 

[biostud]

I just use steam mover, then there's no problem.

http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

 

[KaOTiK]

With 5 games I sure as hell hope you don't have a problem yet.

 

[zinfamous]

So I very recently installed Win7 on my very first SSD drive. That's all I currently have on the drive--a 90GB SSD.

Why do I only have 50gb left? Win7 = 40gb?

 

[The_Golden_Man]

So I very recently installed Win7 on my very first SSD drive. That's all I currently have on the drive--a 90GB SSD.

Why do I only have 50gb left? Win7 = 40gb?

How much RAM do you have?

If you have 8GB, then the Hibernate file will take up 8GB, and the swap file would also take up about 8GB.

If you have 16GB, then you can imagine the rest.

You can disable Hibernate and remove the Hibernate file. You can also adjust or disable the Swap file

 

[Terzo]

So I very recently installed Win7 on my very first SSD drive. That's all I currently have on the drive--a 90GB SSD.

Why do I only have 50gb left? Win7 = 40gb?

Something to do with spare area, I don't understand it well enough to explain it, but here is Anand's explanation.

I don't know what brand of ssd you have or how much spare area they use, but that's probably where all the other space has gone.

 

[CPA]

I have a 1TB drive for Steam, it's full.

Well, yeah, because every sale thread, you are inevitably one of the first posters to pop in a say "thanks, just picked it up".

 

[shingletingle]

I'm making this post because I cannot understand the people complaining they have too small space on their SSD's for their Steam folder/games.

Let's say you have a 80GB SSD containing the Steam folder. Of course this is not enough to store 100 games.

But how many games do people really play? My guess is maybe people switch between two or three games for periods, then they move over to other games. Well, a 80GB SSD is enough for at least 10 game installs. Why do people "need" to have all their Steam games installed all the time?! :\

One can even take a backup of the game, within Steam, and store it on a local harddrive. This eliminates the need for downloading it from Steam again. And the savegames are usually stored in My Documents anyway.


Many people claim they need to use their SSD's for harddrive caching, because of the SSD's small size. I just don't understand this. Using a SSD for Harddrive caching will never yield the same performance as a native SSD anyway.

And let's face it, even a 120GB SSD is cheap nowadays. 120GB will suffice for Windows install, programs and many games. Even 80GB will do that.

Why do people need to have more than 10 games installed at once?! How long does it take to reinstall the game from a local backup anyway? :biggrin:


Regards
The_Golden_Man

I'd like to know how on earth you feel you can easily fit 10 games on an 80GB drive along with Windows, etc. Explain.

 

[Maximilian]

I'd like to know how on earth you feel you can easily fit 10 games on an 80GB drive along with Windows, etc. Explain.

Indeed. Games are huge, windows is huge...

I have 9 games installed, they take up 51GB.

 

[The_Golden_Man]

I'd like to know how on earth you feel you can easily fit 10 games on an 80GB drive along with Windows, etc. Explain.

For 80GB I was talking about a setup where it would be 80GB SSD standalone, without Windows.

With Windows on a 80GB, 5-6 games would fit nicely.

 

[PowerYoga]

I'd like to know how on earth you feel you can easily fit 10 games on an 80GB drive along with Windows, etc. Explain.

Orcs must die and defense grid doesn't take much space.

 

[gladiatorua]

Go to Steam forums. Find people who have the same problem. Make some kind of petition addressed to Steam developers. Write couple of letters to Gabe. Valve is known for being reasonable and user-friendly and multi-location support should not be hard to implement.

 

[RavenSEAL]

I just dragged my Steam folder to my RAID0 and now everything is setup there. The program is installed there, the games download and install there, the games play from there.

 

[crownjules]

Go to Steam forums. Find people who have the same problem. Make some kind of petition addressed to Steam developers. Write couple of letters to Gabe. Valve is known for being reasonable and user-friendly and multi-location support should not be hard to implement.

I honestly don't know why this isn't already a feature. You'd think that when you install each game that there'd be a prompt, similar to any stand alone game you install, where you specify the game installation path.