How to get steam to locate an Installed game if I don't have enough disk space

[BaileyS]

Right,
Basically I have ARK: Survival Evolved installed on my F drive. This is also where steam is installed. I moved ARK: Survival Evolved from a steam library folder on my D drive to my F drive and uninstalled it from my D Drive. When i try to click install ARK on steam, it says I don't have enough disk space, which i don't because I have ARK installed on the SSD.

Is there anyway to get steam to forcefully detect ARK

[BaileyS]

For anyone interested in a fix for this, begin downloading the game on a disk that has enough space, go into the directory you've chosen to download the game to. Find the appmanifest of that game, copy it, paste it into the drive in which you have the game installed. Cancel the download of the game, Close steam, reopen steam and watch it start validating your game :)

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

.acf file is what needed to tell the client if the game is updated to the latest, or installed.

You can find the game .acf file in the Steam\steamapps always, if you have more drives, and have install game on those other drives, they will have their own .acf in there as well, as they all will not be on the same drive, as they be on the drive that the game is installed on.

To tell which .acf file is what, you need to know what your game appid is, you can use this if you want to help find your game appid quick, just type in game name in the search. https://steamdb.info/

Also pro tip, if using multiple drives, when booting system up, ensure drive's are ready, before starting Steam, or else it may not read the .acf files, and games will appear uninstall.

[BaileyS]

Ok now it doesn't seem to work. It was verifying for a bit then it says 0 bytes / 32.9 GB
NOT ENOUGH FREE DISK SPACE.

I currently have 44.3 GB of free disk space, does anyone know what to do?

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

I assume it's trying to download on the C drive which it was originally on, also I could assume it's downloading onto the C drive, before pushing the files to the other drive, that's just my guess, since you're trying to update / verify it.

From your OP sounds like you only drag, and drop the files between drives.

[parched✅]

Yo! Thank you guys so much for your help! Genesis dlc releases in a bit so i moved everything to my ssd and you had the excact same issue lol! Well now I'll be ready for a new dlc!

[BoloMIESTER]

Originally posted by Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

.acf file is what needed to tell the client if the game is updated to the latest, or installed.

You can find the game .acf file in the Steam\steamapps always, if you have more drives, and have install game on those other drives, they will have their own .acf in there as well, as they all will not be on the same drive, as they be on the drive that the game is installed on.

To tell which .acf file is what, you need to know what your game appid is, you can use this if you want to help find your game appid quick, just type in game name in the search. https://steamdb.info/

Also pro tip, if using multiple drives, when booting system up, ensure drive's are ready, before starting Steam, or else it may not read the .acf files, and games will appear uninstall.

I have the appid file but it still is saying I need to install it on my ssd or hard drive. It is already on hard drive but neither have space to install it again,

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Originally posted by AMG:

Originally posted by Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

.acf file is what needed to tell the client if the game is updated to the latest, or installed.

You can find the game .acf file in the Steam\steamapps always, if you have more drives, and have install game on those other drives, they will have their own .acf in there as well, as they all will not be on the same drive, as they be on the drive that the game is installed on.

To tell which .acf file is what, you need to know what your game appid is, you can use this if you want to help find your game appid quick, just type in game name in the search. https://steamdb.info/

Also pro tip, if using multiple drives, when booting system up, ensure drive's are ready, before starting Steam, or else it may not read the .acf files, and games will appear uninstall.

I have the appid file but it still is saying I need to install it on my ssd or hard drive. It is already on hard drive but neither have space to install it again,

If you started the download process, or that the Steam client updated the acf file as not installed, or that there's an update for the game that the acf is telling Steam that it's not up to date, then this will be your problem right there.

This is to help make thing simple, and easier for you for the future.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

Also you may encounter problems if you have the same acf files across multiple drives, as you're only suppose to have one file for the game on one drive, not multiple drives, or else Steam will read the same file multiple times across multiple drives.