How do you juggle your games between a small SSD and a standard hard drive?

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Kalmah

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2003
3,692
1
76


Maybe I misunderstand, this looks like it's 'tricking' the os into thinking files are on hard drive X while they really are on hard drive Y. If hard drive x is the faster one you aren't getting the benefit of it actually being on x. The purpose is to keep the speed of the SSD. Might as well put it all on the slower drive if this is the case since that is really what you're doing.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
 

boozie

Senior member
Oct 12, 2006
486
1
81
+1 Steam Mover. It's by far the best way to go as long as you don't play more than your SSD's worth of games at once. Just move them back and forth. It's very simple.
 

Dumac

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
9,391
1
0
I would recommend not pirating to anyone, then your hard drives won't get overstuffed. I'm not saying that you don't pay for everything, but I have found that people that tend to download torrents and such quickly fill their storage space.

Is this a joke? ah heck off.

I have 200 games on steam, plus others not even on steam. I'm sure other have even more.

Having more than 120GB of games =/= being a pirate.
 
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SMOGZINN

Lifer
Jun 17, 2005
14,202
4,401
136
Maybe I misunderstand, this looks like it's 'tricking' the os into thinking files are on hard drive X while they really are on hard drive Y. If hard drive x is the faster one you aren't getting the benefit of it actually being on x. The purpose is to keep the speed of the SSD. Might as well put it all on the slower drive if this is the case since that is really what you're doing.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes, that is what you are doing. And yes, you don't get the speed advantage of the SSD that way. But, what you can do is move the games you want to play to the SSD selectively, and store them when you are not playing them on the HDD. This is what SteamMover was designed to do, let you swap out what games are on what drive relativity quickly. You still have to copy all that data between drives, so you have to plan ahead a little, but it is a heck of a lot faster then downloading the game each time.
 

Nvidiaguy07

Platinum Member
Feb 22, 2008
2,844
4
81
I would recommend not pirating to anyone, then your hard drives won't get overstuffed. I'm not saying that you don't pay for everything, but I have found that people that tend to download torrents and such quickly fill their storage space.

so your saying theres nothing wrong with pirating, except for the fact that it takes up space on your hard drive?

And my steam folder is about 470GB right now, and has been about that for a while. I have like 300 or something games, and i leave everything installed.
 

WhoBeDaPlaya

Diamond Member
Sep 15, 2000
7,414
401
126
I got tired of doing that and just bought a larger SSD (Vertex 2 120GB -> SanDisk Extreme 240GB). I don't have that many games installed at once, so ~160GB (80GB for the OS partition) mapped to a folder on a mechanical Spinpoint F3 is plenty.
 

Annisman*

Golden Member
Aug 20, 2010
1,918
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My steam folder is 1.35 TB.... That mus make me bluebeard or something. Arrrrr ! Torrents ahoy me mateys!
 

KentState

Diamond Member
Oct 19, 2001
8,397
393
126
I need to figure something out. I have a 240GB main SSD which has a few non-Steam games installed. 120GB secondary SSD with nothing on it and a 1TB HDD with 250GB of Steam games. I'm contemplating turning on the Asus SSD caching feature since the most used game files will fill the 120GB SSD while allow for the entire Steam install to remain on the same drive.
 

PrincessFrosty

Platinum Member
Feb 13, 2008
2,301
68
91
www.frostyhacks.blogspot.com
Maybe I misunderstand, this looks like it's 'tricking' the os into thinking files are on hard drive X while they really are on hard drive Y. If hard drive x is the faster one you aren't getting the benefit of it actually being on x. The purpose is to keep the speed of the SSD. Might as well put it all on the slower drive if this is the case since that is really what you're doing.

This is basically right, and junction points are what the steam mover app creates automatically for you.

I think the general idea is to use that for some games and leave as many as possible on the SSD to keep the speed advantage for at least some games. This is why I don't bother with tools like this, I just manage what games I have installed and keep it reasonable, it helps me stay focused on games until I complete them as well, rather than constantly hopping between them and never finishing anything.

Is this a joke? ah heck off.

I have 200 games on steam, plus others not even on steam. I'm sure other have even more.

Having more than 120GB of games =/= being a pirate.

Yeah I have about 275 now, a friend has 350, I took a screenshot of my desktop the other day for somoene and posted it with steam partly showing and I got accused of having a "hacked steam account" lol :rolleyes:
 

imaheadcase

Diamond Member
May 9, 2005
3,850
7
76
My steam directory is 384 GB...


Anyway, to answer the question, instead of worrying about the hassle, I went the SRT route. I have a 64GB Samsung 830 as cache in front of two 640GB WD black drives that are striped. It works out pretty well. Not quite SSD-like (all my other systems are SSD driven), but close enough that I can barely tell a difference, and I don't have to worry about juggling storage.

So delete some stuff. Problem solved.

Its silly to have a 2nd hardrive to just install games on. Its like getting SLI video cards and playing tetris.
 

Martimus

Diamond Member
Apr 24, 2007
4,488
152
106
I just bought a 256GB SSD as an extra drive a couple weeks ago on an impulse buy, and I was going to move my Steam golder over to it. I looked at it and my Steam folder is nearly 400GB and I have a lot more games not installed than I have installed. So far I haven't used the extra SSD for anything and it is still empty.
 

gorcorps

aka Brandon
Jul 18, 2004
30,736
447
126
So delete some stuff. Problem solved.

Its silly to have a 2nd hardrive to just install games on. Its like getting SLI video cards and playing tetris.

No it's not... why is so damn hard for some of you people to comprehend that not everybody uses their computers exactly like you? Some people bounce between a lot of games because we get bored of the same thing for hours on end. If PCs were meant to have a single drive then motherboards wouldn't be designed with so many SATA ports.
 

Aikouka

Lifer
Nov 27, 2001
30,383
912
126
I've been on the Steam beta updates for awhile now, and it appears that one of the recent updates (I had one come through today) includes support for creating alternate Steam Libraries. Here's some screenshots that I took:

Install Screen
Library Creation Screen

I haven't tried it yet, but this could make people's lives a bit easier as they won't need to use alternate tools. Although, I'm not sure if it's as robust as using things like Steam Mover or doing it manually. The difference is that at least from what I see, you can't easily move something after its installed, or at least I don't see an option under Properties for any of my installed games.
 

CPA

Elite Member
Nov 19, 2001
30,322
4
0
I would recommend not pirating to anyone, then your hard drives won't get overstuffed. I'm not saying that you don't pay for everything, but I have found that people that tend to download torrents and such quickly fill their storage space.


I have almost 300 games, all of which I've purchased. Hell, I wouldn't know how to pirate a game even if I wanted to. plus, when you can get most games, even AAA titles, at less than $10 within a few months, is pirating games even worth it?

I also use SteamMover and hate uninstalling, reinstalling games, so once I've installed the game stays installed. I use a 500gb and 2TB drive for my games. I've used about 1.5TB of space.
 

Tweak155

Lifer
Sep 23, 2003
11,447
262
126
I buy a bigger SSD when the time comes. They only get cheaper so it is easy to justify.

I remember paying $180 for an 80gb drive. Now you're getting them for 50 cents / gb.

Computers are a relatively cheap hobby. We get the benefit of easily selling our old stuff and even the most expensive part is about $400. And if you go that route you probably sold your previous one for $200, making it a $200 upkeep. It's not all that bad.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
I mainly just keep os on my ssd, although I did just score a 180gbb one and for now just planning on tossing some mmos on it as they are fairly ignorant of installation directories like normal programs.
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
29,044
41,734
136
copy/paste

When i want to move a game back to the ssd, start the dl process from steam, stop it, and copy the folder back
 

Red Storm

Lifer
Oct 2, 2005
14,233
234
106
Our internet is fast enough where I just delete the games I don't play and only install the ones I'm actively playing. I feel that the majority of people who have to have all 40-50 of their games installed only play a handful of them at best.
 

Xonim

Golden Member
Jul 13, 2011
1,131
0
0
Have a 160GB SSD now with BF3 / Crysis 2 / WoW installed on it. Steam is currently sitting on a 2TB WD black, even though my folder is only (HAH!) ~500GB. I have a lot of indie-type games from Humble Bundles and what not.

I've read that there's now the option to tell steam to install to another folder, haven't verified though. I'm going to be swapping out my 160GB SSD (Intel 320, SATA2) for a 128GB SSD (Samsung 830, SATA3) here shortly. If that's true, I'll install Steam (plus WoW/BF3) to the SSD and just put the games on the WD Black.
 

IGemini

Platinum Member
Nov 5, 2010
2,473
2
81
My current game library on-hand would fill a 256GB drive, and there's still more I could install.

I just ended up putting Steam on the HDD and use Steam Mover to move those that could really benefit from the load times to the SSD.
 

JamesV

Platinum Member
Jul 9, 2011
2,002
2
76
I use mklink.

Question; Guild Wars 2 installs in C:\Program Files (x86), and when I try to move it to my large HDD, I get an error. Any subfolders in that same directory (ie \Steam, etc) work fine, but nothing from that root directory can be linked. Quirk with Windows 7?