Installing steam to another drive and system stability???

[brotj7]

So I know steam can easily be installed to another drive for more storage, faster drive subsystem, etc. But is this actually recommended in a Windows environment? Does steam sandbox the games so only steam touches the registry? How good is the steam uninstaller these days? Does this installation process muck up the registry? Does it help mitigate any registry issues?

Vista Ultimate x64 is the master OS which has been running great since day 1. With all of the hype and hate, I decided early on to do my own own change management by testing out applications in a VMWare Vista VM and have been careful with what I end up putting on this system. I have not needed to uninstall/reinstall anything in 3 years. But for some reason this seems different to me, I guess I'm not so good with resource allocation. Are there any DBA's out there that want to chime in???

 

[aka1nas]

So I know steam can easily be installed to another drive for more storage, faster drive subsystem, etc. But is this actually recommended in a Windows environment? Does steam sandbox the games so only steam touches the registry? How good is the steam uninstaller these days? Does this installation process muck up the registry? Does it help mitigate any registry issues?

Vista Ultimate x64 is the master OS which has been running great since day 1. With all of the hype and hate, I decided early on to do my own own change management by testing out applications in a VMWare Vista VM and have been careful with what I end up putting on this system. I have not needed to uninstall/reinstall anything in 3 years. But for some reason this seems different to me, I guess I'm not so good with resource allocation. Are there any DBA's out there that want to chime in???

You're overthinking this. Install it to another volume if the storage available there better fits your game install needs, otherwise don't bother.

The Steam client is actually pretty good about portability. You can mostly drop in the SteamApps folder from an old installation once the client is re installed and it figures it out.

 

[Anteaus]

I think the best thing you can do is get it out of the Program files (x86) directory. Some programs are known to have permissions issues which show up as compatibility issues when operating from this directory. This likely wouldn't be a big deal with the vast majority of the games tho.

Moving it to another drive isn't really necessary, but moving it to a dedicated /games directory can't hurt. I used to have problems with software that completely went away when i moved them. I don't install anything under Program Files anymore. Everything goes under /Applications or /Games.

 

[Red Hawk]

I've had Steam on a second hard drive for a while now. No compatibility or stability problems regarding that. Although I will say that twice when I've uninstalled Steam on different computers a "Bonus/Soundtrack" folder for Dragon Age Origins was left behind, which absolutely refused to be deleted or moved. Kept telling me I needed Admin rights to get rid of it, which I had, so I don't know what the problem is.

 

[SaDiZTiKStyLeZ]

I never have my games on main partition. Just OS & related files/programs, stuff.
I always have a separate partition/s just for games.
I don't think it matters as much as it used to, IIRC. But it's still a preferred method of practice.

 

[brotj7]

Thanks all. I currently have a laptop for gaming, and will be doing a fresh install on this pc if I end up doing so. I'm not worried about moving a file around, just the enevitable uninstalling, and registry residue if I need to uninstall a/all games as a whole. I had Hellgate London which I couldn't even uninstall on another machine because it needed to dial home for anything, I had to reinstall windows to get rid of it.