Help get save games off the main C: drive

[Rasayana]

Hel get save games off the main C: drive
Hi folks!

First of all, I would like to excuse myself if I sound frustrated, long winding, or stupid.

I experience what I perceive as a problem, which I think should have one or several solutions.
Basically I have lots of games installed on separate drives, but saves keeps landing in the C: drive, which I would like to reserve for Windows.

I would like a method for any game to put save games in a folder of my choice.

What I have in mind is something like for example:

Playing Pentiment, the game automatically saves to
C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\LocalLow\Obsidian Entertainment\Pentiment\CurrentGame

Later if I come back to the game, and continue the game it will automatically load from this location.

What I want is that whenever something try to read or write to the directory
C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\LocalLow\Obsidian Entertainment
it would instead read or write to
G:\Games\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Pentiment\SAVES
which would be a directory under the game install folder.

Similarly I would do that for any game on my computer.
I would like to know if this is possible and safe to do. If this is not possible, what could I do instead?

As for my frustration (and stupidity?) I can't believe that I would have to do this. Why would not any game designer write save games to either the same disk as the game is installed on, or ask the user where you would like to save the files?

[Azure Fang]

Very few games allow you to specify save locations. Even less allow drives other than C. This has been the way of things since the Windows era.

The only way to accomplish what you want to do is to set up symlinks for each, individual game, routing them from their intended save location to yours. Not only is this a tedious process, some games may just fail when trying to write to a symlinked location.

[Rasayana]

Originally posted by Azure Fang:

Very few games allow you to specify save locations. Even less allow drives other than C. This has been the way of things since the Windows era.

The only way to accomplish what you want to do is to set up symlinks for each, individual game, routing them from their intended save location to yours. Not only is this a tedious process, some games may just fail when trying to write to a symlinked location.

Thanks!
It's not anything I have done before. I could try for tedious.
If it doesn't work for a given game, could I then undo my changes?
Could you point me toward some kind of guide?

[Hannibal]

You can move the folder and just use a dynamic link. I tend to do that with large files that really dont need to be on the OS drive or C:

[Crystal Sharrd]

Originally posted by Rasayana:

Hel get save games off the main C: drive
Hi folks!

First of all, I would like to excuse myself if I sound frustrated, long winding, or stupid.

I experience what I perceive as a problem, which I think should have one or several solutions.
Basically I have lots of games installed on separate drives, but saves keeps landing in the C: drive, which I would like to reserve for Windows.

I would like a method for any game to put save games in a folder of my choice.

What I have in mind is something like for example:

Playing Pentiment, the game automatically saves to
C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\LocalLow\Obsidian Entertainment\Pentiment\CurrentGame

Later if I come back to the game, and continue the game it will automatically load from this location.

What I want is that whenever something try to read or write to the directory
C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\LocalLow\Obsidian Entertainment
it would instead read or write to
G:\Games\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Pentiment\SAVES
which would be a directory under the game install folder.

Similarly I would do that for any game on my computer.
I would like to know if this is possible and safe to do. If this is not possible, what could I do instead?

As for my frustration (and stupidity?) I can't believe that I would have to do this. Why would not any game designer write save games to either the same disk as the game is installed on, or ask the user where you would like to save the files?

Your best bet is to move the folder to a different drive and then create a directory junction using Command Prompt:

mklink /j "C:\Users\Username\AppData\LocalLow\Obsidian Entertainment\Pentiment\CurrentGame" "G:\Games\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Pentiment\SAVES"

[Rasayana]

Originally posted by Crystal Sharrd:

Your best bet is to move the folder to a different drive and then create a directory junction using Command Prompt:

mklink /j "C:\Users\Username\AppData\LocalLow\Obsidian Entertainment\Pentiment\CurrentGame" "G:\Games\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Pentiment\SAVES"

After a little experimentation, using the Directory Junction /j parameter, this absolutely seems to be on the right track. I have not encountered any game-destroying hiccups yet.

I do wonder however:

What is a junction?

Comparing against a linux system, symlink as I understand it is a "soft link" where a file points towards another file (which points toward a memory spot), and hard link would obviously be "hard" where two files point toward the same memory spot. I base my question on information recieved here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO0OkNxDJ3c&ab_channel=CBTNuggets


In a junction; are the containing files acting as "soft" links or "hard" links?

Azure Fang, above, recommended me to symlink the files. Is it preferred to have "soft" links for the thing I would like to do?

[󠀡󠀡]

Symlinks are newer tech while directory junctions are older. I suggest using symlinks instead of junctions though likely the nuances between the two isn't something that will matter.

Rather than placing the saved game folder inside the game directory, you might want to put all your saved games in one folder, like G:\SavedGames\ and then have a directory for each game.

Depending on whether your G: drive is an SSD or not, and how much you're hurting for space on C:, you might want to consider moving your whole appdata or documents folder over to G: and then making a symlink. The last thing you probably want is the headache of having to keep track of where you have symlinks and where they point to.

Another thing to keep in mind with symlinks is that used space will be reported incorrectly. If you make symlinks to large folders you might see that the used space on your C: drive exceed its capacity...

[Rasayana]

Thank you so much everyone. You are all very helpful!

At a later time I will explore Symlinks, and try and go with that. I hope that I can handle it well.

[󠀡󠀡]

Originally posted by Rasayana:

Thank you so much everyone. You are all very helpful!

At a later time I will explore Symlinks, and try and go with that. I hope that I can handle it well.

It's just mklink /D instead of /J