Is there a way to not use the C: drive at all?

[Crowbot]

I have a tiny C: drive and rimworld does something that fills the drive and causes chaos with anything else using that drive.
I've already moved the save directory, what else can I do?

[Astasia]

Probably not, it uses LocalLow under appdata. It will fill the drive when you get a mod related issue related to sound effects, it spams a unity error in Player.log until the drive fills up or you force close the app. You can stop using mods that add sound effects, or you can force close the RimWorld app if it doesn't shut down quickly when you try to close it normally. You might also be able to set the Player.log and Player-prev.log files to read only, I don't know if that works or if it causes the game to freak out.

[desrtfox071]

If you have your User folder redirected using a symlink or hardlink that could work, but that's not a basic Windows task.

[TSE Imperator]

Originally posted by Crowbot:

I have a tiny C: drive and rimworld does something that fills the drive and causes chaos with anything else using that drive.
I've already moved the save directory, what else can I do?

Migrate your user folders to your storage drive.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-tip-move-your-default-data-folders-to-a-different-drive/#:~:text=To%20make%20the%20move%2C%20open,to%20create%20it%20for%20you.)

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Spirit:

Originally posted by Crowbot:

I have a tiny C: drive and rimworld does something that fills the drive and causes chaos with anything else using that drive.
I've already moved the save directory, what else can I do?

Migrate your user folders to your storage drive.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-tip-move-your-default-data-folders-to-a-different-drive/#:~:text=To%20make%20the%20move%2C%20open,to%20create%20it%20for%20you.)

Can't move AppData that way. Only works for things like Documents or Music. Most modern games store data under Documents, RimWorld does not.

[TSE Imperator]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Spirit:

Migrate your user folders to your storage drive.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-tip-move-your-default-data-folders-to-a-different-drive/#:~:text=To%20make%20the%20move%2C%20open,to%20create%20it%20for%20you.)

Can't move AppData that way. Only works for things like Documents or Music. Most modern games store data under Documents, RimWorld does not.

Yeah that's true, I was just thinking of a user friendly way for the OP to free up some space on their C so they could stop worrying about it.

[Vilab]

Originally posted by Crowbot:

I have a tiny C: drive and rimworld does something that fills the drive and causes chaos with anything else using that drive.
I've already moved the save directory, what else can I do?

not installing rimworld on the C drive ?

right click on rimworld in the steam library, propriety, local files, move installation files ( to an other drive )

above is a rought translation, my steam isn't in English

Steam should ask you where to install your games when you download them, a lot of my older / low requirement games are installed on my D HDD instead of my C SSD ( where i keep my heavily modded Rimworld so that it take 1 minute to load instead of an hour )

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Vilab:

not installing rimworld on the C drive ?

Doesn't matter where you install it. It will always dump logs and such into AppData on your OS drive (C). It doesn't use much space normally and shouldn't be an issue. It's just the one error that can fill the log and use up gigabytes of space if you let it.

[Cheet4h]

You can move RimWorld's data directory to a different drive, then create a Junction back to that location so that the data is still accessible from there.

There's a tool that can do this semi-automatically for you, and for many other games: GameSave Manager lets you move savegames to a cloud drive with this method.
Of course that would mean that you need your cloud drive storage to be on your larger drive, but since you wrote that your system drive is small, I would assume this is already the case.
Putting it into a cloud directory has the added benefit that you have continuous backups in case your hard drive fails at some point, but might become bothersome if you have only limited space available.

You can also do this manually, if you don't shy away from using the console - remember, never enter code into the console if you do not know what it does. Consider checking the commands with a trusted source first.

Important:
Prior to doing this, back the folder up so you can restore it if anything goes wrong - simply copy it to another location, e.g. your desktop.

After making sure you have a backup, open a PowerShell console (press WIN+X, then select "Windows Powershell").
Think about where you want to move the directory (the new location should not exist already), then enter

$Target = "<Drive>:\Path\To\New\Location"

Replace everything within the quotes with the full path to the new location. Keep the quotes.
For example, the path to the new location could look like this:
"D:\DataStorage\Games\RimWorld"
In this case, the folder "D:\DataStorage\Games\" would exist already, while the subfolder "RimWorld" would be where the moved folder ends up.

After that enter

$Path = "$env:APPDATA\..\LocalLow\Ludeon Studios\RimWorld by Ludeon Studios"

Move-Item -Path $Path -Destination $Target 
New-Item -Type Junction -Path $Path -Target $Target 

This first moves RimWorld's userdata directory to the new location, then creates a Junction at the original location.

Check if it worked first by opening the folder at its original location, then open a new window and open the new location of the folder. Create a new empty text document in one of the windows, and it should also appear in the other (you may need to refresh the view by pressing F5). The original folder also should have the link symbol you might recognize from shortcuts on your desktop.
If it worked, open RimWorld and check if you can save & load games without errors.

If you encounter errors at any point, you can always restore your backup by deleting the folder or junction at the original location and copying the backup there again.

[Darzan]

Since having 120GB SSD on C: drive and 1GB HDD on D:, I have all my installed games on D:/games and also steam on D:/steam which is steam default install location. It works great with most games.

Some games do not play by rules and have to do some manual BS to override them. Had to direct C: steam download directory to D: as Ark wanted its insanely large install to be on C.

Assuming that your C: is on SSD and also keeps your swap, you want to keep at least 20-30 GB free on that drive all time. It also boosts SSD speed.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Vilab:

not installing rimworld on the C drive ?

Doesn't matter where you install it. It will always dump logs and such into AppData on your OS drive (C). It doesn't use much space normally and shouldn't be an issue. It's just the one error that can fill the log and use up gigabytes of space if you let it.

Just curious - A remapping of the location won't be suitable or, perhaps, Windows doesn't allow that there? (It's been a very long time since I had to "netwerk-enjuneeror stuffs.")

(Now I got to go out and check to see if Rimworld absconded with some filespace. I use so few mods, never bothered with changing diagnostics to verbose settings, so I never worried about it. That's not proof against giant log files, though.)

[Astasia]

By default windows doesn't let you really do anything with appdata, it doesn't even let you see it until you tell it to show hidden/system files IIRC. I don't think there are any easy option settings anywhere to move it, and I think the normal methods to get around it discussed above involve basically tricking windows into thinking the files are somewhere else. Though you might be able to do something more direct by editing the registry, I would not suggest anyone try that.

My C drive is a 250gb SSD, and I went through trying to move as much as I could off that drive when I set the PC up. I couldn't see a good/easy way to deal with appdata so I left it alone.

[Morkonan]

Normally, there shouldn't be any reason to move local appdata stuffs. And, remapping it to a network drive or other source could end up causing issues, I guess. It was just a weird notion and I don't deal with Win10 in any true technical sense. Windows-For-Workgroups-FTW! :)

I need to clear off my data drive... That was the issue. I've got other drives, but I also have runtimes and big data files on that darn C: drive and Rimworld happens to be there, too. I've reinstalled large game packages on other drives, but not Rimworld.

I have like... Well... an obscene amount of textures, 3d work, complex projects I've abandoned, and just too many gigs of crap like that. Not that it's actually "obscene!" It's just that I am a pack-rat with such things. (Oh, I might be able to use this one day!, Neato, that's great concept art - Saved! /sigh) With everything stored what would have been "neatly" had I always followed my own storage conventions, it wouldn't be an issue. But, that drive is having issues creating smoothly functional application caches, now... And, those apps that use those also sometimes work better with direct root installs and access. :/

Thus - It's why I participated, here. It's a desperate situation requiring desperate measures, so any port in a storm...

Update - Only an 11k logfile. Doormat and one other mod had an improper format warning, probably because they don't have the latest version tag or something.

[Fatty McBoomBoom]

set the folder rimworld is writing to read only