Question Steam and storage capacity

[punkncat]

I have not run into this issue before, and not sure if there is a way to deal with it....
With Steam you can have a game in the common folder, copy it, move it to another PC in the same folder and thus transfer a game without having to download all of it. I have used this method time and time again, however I have run into a novel situation with a configuration I am trying something with.

I have a PC with a limited amount of drive space. There is enough to download and play a specific game or two that people are asking about performance numbers. Doing the method above there has always been enough space on disk to "install twice" as it were. What I mean by that is this: When you move the game over manually the downloader is still going to want to do it's thing, reserve space and THEN it realizes the files are there and just confirms everything is in place and uses that data instead of over-writing it. I am running into a situation where I do not have the room to install the game twice. I manually move the file to the proper place and when it is confirming the files and reserving space is giving the insufficient space error.

I have tried various ways of starting the download, pausing, adding the files to the spot where the Steam console does but it simply will not work. Is there a way around this, or that it will need to have a supplemental drive installed in order to get this done?

Thx

 

[USAFRet]

You can create a folder on a different drive, and designate that as the default install location.

You don't have to "install here and then move to there".

Steam games location
In the steam client:
Steam
Settings
Downloads
Steam Library Folders
Add library folder

(exact image may have changed, but this is the basics)

 

[USAFRet]

Further, to move a game...

To move an already installed game
Games library
Right click the game
Properties
Installed Files
Move Install Folder

 

[stonecarver]

What USAFRet said.

 

[35below0]

It is in steam settings - Storage

https://imgur.com/yZmFomP

View: https://i.imgur.com/yZmFomP.png


You can add a drive, and Steam will manage the rest. I wanted to create a folder myself, but i don't think that's possible.
You can move the game from the same menu; just select a game and click Move.

 

[punkncat]

I thought I was being clear enough in saying that I am aware of that. I don't have another drive connected to move it from. I was hoping I could just move it onto the drive using a USB vs. having to download it in this instance. From the above replies it would appear that my best bet is just to temporarily install an additional drive in order to be able to use the above (tried and true) method.

I appreciate the comments, thank you all.

 

[35below0]

I thought I was being clear enough in saying that I am aware of that. I don't have another drive connected to move it from. I was hoping I could just move it onto the drive using a USB vs. having to download it in this instance. From the above replies it would appear that my best bet is just to temporarily install an additional drive in order to be able to use the above (tried and true) method.

I appreciate the comments, thank you all.

Yeah, having re-read your OP, the solution does seem to require an additional drive. But i'm, not sure because Steam will have two locations for the library, one on the filled up disk and the other on the temporary drive. So you plan to copy the game onto the temporary drive, into the correct location, then let Steam attempt to download the game onto the temporary drive library, allocate space for the game on that drive (you will make sure there is enough space), start downloading, realize the game files are there, check the files, confirm they're all present, then get rid of any allocated space as it's not needed anymore.
And with that, your game is now installed in the library on the PC, without you having to download it.

I don't have any experience with this sort of thing. I guess as long as Steam doesn't complain about a USB drive as a storage location, you're all good.

 

[USAFRet]

I guess as long as Steam doesn't complain about a USB drive as a storage location, you're all good.

Steam does not care.
As a test a few years ago, I installed a couple of games to a mapped drive letter. Which was a subfolder in a volume on my NAS.

 

[punkncat]

In relation to a drive inside a USB enclosure, Steam doesn't (or no longer) gives that as a valid option. It will not show up in the location choices. I was hoping so, since I have a 1TB drive here that I keep Steam on to make moving things and restoring easier.

I am just going to remove that from the enclosure and plug it in. Should work...maybe...

 

[USAFRet]

In relation to a drive inside a USB enclosure, Steam doesn't (or no longer) gives that as a valid option. It will not show up in the location choices. I was hoping so, since I have a 1TB drive here that I keep Steam on to make moving things and restoring easier.

I am just going to remove that from the enclosure and plug it in. Should work...maybe...

Really? That's interesting.

Guess things have changed.

 

[35below0]

Steam had a major revamp of their client. I'm not shocked it's more fussy. I don't know if it's security or what.

 

[thestryker]

I just put my 500GB USB drive in and went to storage settings and chose "add drive" and it was right there (along with my two mapped network drives) so I'm not sure what you all are talking about.

 

[iTRiP]

I have not run into this issue before, and not sure if there is a way to deal with it....
With Steam you can have a game in the common folder, copy it, move it to another PC in the same folder and thus transfer a game without having to download all of it. I have used this method time and time again, however I have run into a novel situation with a configuration I am trying something with.

I have a PC with a limited amount of drive space. There is enough to download and play a specific game or two that people are asking about performance numbers. Doing the method above there has always been enough space on disk to "install twice" as it were. What I mean by that is this: When you move the game over manually the downloader is still going to want to do it's thing, reserve space and THEN it realizes the files are there and just confirms everything is in place and uses that data instead of over-writing it. I am running into a situation where I do not have the room to install the game twice. I manually move the file to the proper place and when it is confirming the files and reserving space is giving the insufficient space error.

I have tried various ways of starting the download, pausing, adding the files to the spot where the Steam console does but it simply will not work. Is there a way around this, or that it will need to have a supplemental drive installed in order to get this done?

Thx

At this point you have reached, you'd be best off just buying and installing another drive in your pc, or start removing, uninstalling non used games, software to free up space...

As far as I'm aware steam still functions like that of what you describe, allocating space even if the space had been allocated by the pc user prior to downloading or installing said game or software.

I ran into this problem countless times when I had less free space or fewer drives installed, maybe steam could improve or maybe somebody knows a method to save everybody from buying more drives, anyway I hadn't found a better way to resolve this issue. (then again, It's actually good for the industry, people buying more drives because they ran into these issues)

In my case I simply can't add anymore drives as to my knowledge as my pc is filled every possible drive expansion possibility (other than to buy and swap out drives for higher capacity) so I'll just have to start uninstalling or simply format the pc and start fresh if I ever run into this problem again.

Besides that, I hope with everybody's input you can figure some form resolve for yourself, best of luck.

 

[punkncat]

@iTRiP, in relation to your post, first thank you.

Something I have found helpful in builds and particularly in a situation where you have a connected LAN:

I have found that having at least one PC on the network to have a really large HDD. I keep it for archiving, old movies, music, pictures and other data...AND keeping old games on. Now, I did this because prior to recently I was on a data cap with my ISP, so if I had already downloaded a game it was better to transfer it across to that big HDD than to delete in case I opted to reinstall. Playing directly from the HDD is a fools game on anything recent and large as games tend to be these days, but it can be handy to move the one you are tired of off to there just in case you feel nostalgic.

I have recently been considering deleting games I haven't played in a timeframe I have yet to set. The method above has ended up at the inevitable lack of space there as well and some of these games I haven't touched in years. At least for the moment I have a faster connection and no data cap, so I may try the delete/reload method as you describe.
On the system and situation I posted about I opted to put in a larger drive and the method works as expected so long as you actually have 2X the space available so it can allocate, then find, then correct and validate the library entry.

 

[thestryker]

Something I have found helpful in builds and particularly in a situation where you have a connected LAN:

I have found that having at least one PC on the network to have a really large HDD. I keep it for archiving, old movies, music, pictures and other data...AND keeping old games on. Now, I did this because prior to recently I was on a data cap with my ISP, so if I had already downloaded a game it was better to transfer it across to that big HDD than to delete in case I opted to reinstall. Playing directly from the HDD is a fools game on anything recent and large as games tend to be these days, but it can be handy to move the one you are tired of off to there just in case you feel nostalgic.

Something I found out when installing some games on my Ally which were already on my primary PC is that if you are logged into Steam on multiple devices instead of downloading off of Steam servers it will just install over your local network. I'm too lazy to setup a local steam cache so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this as I used to just copy/paste/verify.

 

[iTRiP]

Something I found out when installing some games on my Ally which were already on my primary PC is that if you are logged into Steam on multiple devices instead of downloading off of Steam servers it will just install over your local network. I'm too lazy to setup a local steam cache so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this as I used to just copy/paste/verify.

I'd say that's a very handy feature, you'd probably get great speeds off of a lan setup like that.

I'm still limited by my ISP, (and I don't have a lan) here they are still not upgrading the speeds for the same price, it's been like that for years, ever since covid, I reckon, everybody seemed to forget that that was a major incentive to keep upgrading connection speeds for the same monthly payment to your selected ISP,( it was like actually a trend that just out of the blue ended) thus like I said above I have simply resorted into getting more storage on my pc, so now I'm only downloading once, and do the install & verify method when on Steam, Rockstar games, EA, Ubisoft connect.

Out of all of those I reckon that Rockstar games are doing the best, there system is by far the most productive and effectively speed way to utilize, you even get full hardware capability speeds like it ought to be when re-installing or verifying already downloaded games on your pc.