- Apr 12, 2010
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Hi guys. I recently caught on to this technique to be able to move games out of the Steam folder but still play them. There's a few reasons to do this. For me, it's because I finally got an SSD (solid state drive) and I wanted to put one or two games on it that I'll be playing a lot (only an 80GB SSD). Another scenario would be you have multiple drives but maybe your main gaming drive is filling up. You can move a game or two onto a different drive without moving the entire Steam library.
So, a little background. Steam likes to stick all of your Steam games into the Steamapps folder. If you move a game out of there normally, you can no longer play it. So your only option has been to move the entire library!
The cure:
Open command prompt (click start, type "command" and then select it)
Now, you'll need to CUT the game folder you want to move (example: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\<Game Folder> ) and then paste it wherever you now want it to be. You'll have to remember the address.
In command prompt, type:
mklink /J [old location] <new location>
(simply typing "mklink" will show you the options associated with the command)
Here's an example of how I used it.
I cut and pasted f1 2010 from my steam folder and onto my ssd, then typed this into command prompt:
mklink /J "d:\steam\steamapps\common\f1 2010" "c:\games\f1 2010"
NOTE: the " " are because the folder name has a space in it, otherwise it wouldn't be needed.
UPDATE: /J command is needed to go to a different drive, if referencing elswhere on the same drive use /D
This will create what appears to be a "shortcut" within the steam folder but it's a bit different. Deleting the "shortcut" folder will only delete the mklink, so you could cut and paste the folder back into steam after that and it will all work just fine, if you decide you no longer need it to be in that different location.
A little more advanced, I used this to stick my entire Steam folder onto my SSD, then used mklink to put my steamapps folder onto my HDDs, but then another mklink out of that to put f1 2010 on my SSD. This was just so that Steam itself would be faster to load while still keeping most games on my HDD. BTW, I found out having the mklink already created in the steamapps folder, I didn't need to recreate it upon moving the steamapps folder. It's smart enough to just do it automatically (because it works like a "shortcut" - if you move the shortcut's location it will still point to the same folder).
Hope this helps some people out!
Update 2: To summarize some points raised in the discussion, these links will use a small amount of space to reference the new location (kbs) but the actual file space is only being used at the new location so no worries 😀 (thanks to randomizer for explaining)
So, a little background. Steam likes to stick all of your Steam games into the Steamapps folder. If you move a game out of there normally, you can no longer play it. So your only option has been to move the entire library!
The cure:
Open command prompt (click start, type "command" and then select it)
Now, you'll need to CUT the game folder you want to move (example: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\<Game Folder> ) and then paste it wherever you now want it to be. You'll have to remember the address.
In command prompt, type:
mklink /J [old location] <new location>
(simply typing "mklink" will show you the options associated with the command)
Here's an example of how I used it.
I cut and pasted f1 2010 from my steam folder and onto my ssd, then typed this into command prompt:
mklink /J "d:\steam\steamapps\common\f1 2010" "c:\games\f1 2010"
NOTE: the " " are because the folder name has a space in it, otherwise it wouldn't be needed.
UPDATE: /J command is needed to go to a different drive, if referencing elswhere on the same drive use /D
This will create what appears to be a "shortcut" within the steam folder but it's a bit different. Deleting the "shortcut" folder will only delete the mklink, so you could cut and paste the folder back into steam after that and it will all work just fine, if you decide you no longer need it to be in that different location.
A little more advanced, I used this to stick my entire Steam folder onto my SSD, then used mklink to put my steamapps folder onto my HDDs, but then another mklink out of that to put f1 2010 on my SSD. This was just so that Steam itself would be faster to load while still keeping most games on my HDD. BTW, I found out having the mklink already created in the steamapps folder, I didn't need to recreate it upon moving the steamapps folder. It's smart enough to just do it automatically (because it works like a "shortcut" - if you move the shortcut's location it will still point to the same folder).
Hope this helps some people out!
Update 2: To summarize some points raised in the discussion, these links will use a small amount of space to reference the new location (kbs) but the actual file space is only being used at the new location so no worries 😀 (thanks to randomizer for explaining)
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