accessing steam library from networked mapped drive

[Chris Solomon]

I just got a new laptop to replace my almost decade old Toshiba laptop. Unfortunetly, my new laptop, like seeminly all new laptops, are lacking in drive space because of the inclusion of a SSD. I have upgraded my old toshiba with 2x 2TB drives. one for the OS, one for games. my second 2TB ( the game drive) is almost full, and there is no way the data from it would fit on the new laptop. so until I come up with a more permanent solution, I would like to use my old laptop as a sort of file server for my steam library. My network connection between the to PC's far outstrips my internet connection, so network bandwidth between the two PC's would not bean issue. I have setup the Folder share of the game drive on the old toshiba, and have setup a custom steam library on the new laptop 's (hence forth called MSI or MSI laptop) secondary 1Tb hdd that uses a junction to the mapped drives folder (\\server-pc\E\program files X86\steam\steamapps\).

and thats where i am running into trouble. I have set the file share on the toshiba for full R/W remote access, but when i try and setup the game (which is listed as uninstalled in steam on the MSI), it says there is a disk write error. what am i doing wrong? is what I am doing even possible? if not, what are my alternatives for accessing my already downloaded steam library on the toshiba system from the MSI system?

Toshiba system specs:
(factory installed) Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
i7-720 QM
8Gb
nvidia GT330M discrete w/ 1Gb GDDR3
1x 2Tb SSHD
1x 2TB HDD
unit does have a windows 10 pro license but is not using it ATM.

MSI unit specs
Windows 10 Pro x64
i7-8750H
16Gb
Nvidia GTX 1060 6Gb GDDR / intel UHD 630
1x 256 SSD
1x 1Tb

[rezo]

You shouldnt keep your game library on a seperate system to the system youre playing on. Theres no way you play all 125 games in your library so just have the games you like installed on your new MSI laptop and when you want to play a new game just uninstall an old game and reinstall a new game.

The bandwidth between your two laptops wont be fast enough to boot games and to send data between your old laptop and new laptop whilst running a game, plus you'll also be bottlenecked by the speed of your old harddrives and motherboards.

[Eldin]

I've never tried that, but I had some experience with junction and disk write error.

When you go to E:\program files X86\steam\steamapps\ with Windows file explorer, can you see game folders from your server there?

Next thing, instead of linking whole steamapps folder, link only common folder and copy appmanifest files to the laptop.
If appmanifest files are on the laptop, Steam should see your games as installed. Then try to run game.

[Chris Solomon]

Originally posted by rezo:

You shouldnt keep your game library on a seperate system to the system youre playing on. Theres no way you play all 125 games in your library so just have the games you like installed on your new MSI laptop and when you want to play a new game just uninstall an old game and reinstall a new game.

The bandwidth between your two laptops wont be fast enough to boot games and to send data between your old laptop and new laptop whilst running a game, plus you'll also be bottlenecked by the speed of your old harddrives and motherboards.

actually its somewhere around 164 games..... but I do play them all. besides that, uninstalling a game to make room for an old game doesn't work well in my situation, I only have a 6mbps internet connection which is painfully slow.

Originally posted by Eldin:

I've never tried that, but I had some experience with junction and disk write error.

When you go to E:\program files X86\steam\steamapps\ with Windows file explorer, can you see game folders from your server there?

Next thing, instead of linking whole steamapps folder, link only common folder and copy appmanifest files to the laptop.
If appmanifest files are on the laptop, Steam should see your games as installed. Then try to run game.

that is a good idea, but i have actually made some progress.... I found out that setting up a symbolic link directly from the mapped drive from (mapperd drive) E:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\ to c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\ worked well. So i am basicly replicating how I accessed my steam library on my toshiba laptop (accessing the library from the secondary drive as if it were on the primary drive.) I am a little concerned about extra wear and tear on the SSD, but since the files actually reside elsewhere, maybe it shoudl be okay? the gamesare now showing as installed, and one game, Subnautica, even downloaded an update successfully. the program that has helped me numerous times with all my junction and symbolic link needs is called link shell extension, and it is a wonderful free little program. anyone that uses symbolic links or junctions with their steam install should get this program to help manage the links. it is essentially a frontend for the M$ program mklnk.exe but it makes things SOOOO much easier.

http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html

[Eldin]

Originally posted by Chris Solomon:

Originally posted by rezo:

You shouldnt keep your game library on a seperate system to the system youre playing on. Theres no way you play all 125 games in your library so just have the games you like installed on your new MSI laptop and when you want to play a new game just uninstall an old game and reinstall a new game.

The bandwidth between your two laptops wont be fast enough to boot games and to send data between your old laptop and new laptop whilst running a game, plus you'll also be bottlenecked by the speed of your old harddrives and motherboards.

actually its somewhere around 164 games..... but I do play them all. besides that, uninstalling a game to make room for an old game doesn't work well in my situation, I only have a 6mbps internet connection which is painfully slow.

actually, you don't have to uninstall games.
just copy game folder and appmanifest file of games you want to play.
When you want to free up space for other games, just delete game folder (don't uninstall it via Steam) and copy folders and appmanifest of other games you want to play.
You can quickly copy games from laptot to your PC when you want to play them.

Originally posted by Chris Solomon:

Originally posted by Eldin:

I've never tried that, but I had some experience with junction and disk write error.

When you go to E:\program files X86\steam\steamapps\ with Windows file explorer, can you see game folders from your server there?

Next thing, instead of linking whole steamapps folder, link only common folder and copy appmanifest files to the laptop.
If appmanifest files are on the laptop, Steam should see your games as installed. Then try to run game.

that is a good idea, but i have actually made some progress.... I found out that setting up a symbolic link directly from the mapped drive from (mapperd drive) E:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\ to c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\ worked well. So i am basicly replicating how I accessed my steam library on my toshiba laptop (accessing the library from the secondary drive as if it were on the primary drive.) I am a little concerned about extra wear and tear on the SSD, but since the files actually reside elsewhere, maybe it shoudl be okay? the gamesare now showing as installed, and one game, Subnautica, even downloaded an update successfully. the program that has helped me numerous times with all my junction and symbolic link needs is called link shell extension, and it is a wonderful free little program. anyone that uses symbolic links or junctions with their steam install should get this program to help manage the links. it is essentially a frontend for the M$ program mklnk.exe but it makes things SOOOO much easier.

http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html

Ok, now the question is can you run the game and does it suffer from performance loss?
And there shouldn't be any wear on your SSD because as you said, files are not actually on SSD.

[Chris Solomon]

that is an idea. eventually I might get a larger TB drive and put it in an external caddy, and have that hooked up as an external drive (hooked up semi-permanently) an load my steam and other ganes (*cough* *cough* Origin *cough* *cough*, and GoG games included) to that drive and put it into an external caddy.

Originally posted by Eldin:

Originally posted by Chris Solomon:

that is a good idea, but i have actually made some progress.... I found out that setting up a symbolic link directly from the mapped drive from (mapperd drive) E:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\ to c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\ worked well. So i am basicly replicating how I accessed my steam library on my toshiba laptop (accessing the library from the secondary drive as if it were on the primary drive.) I am a little concerned about extra wear and tear on the SSD, but since the files actually reside elsewhere, maybe it shoudl be okay? the gamesare now showing as installed, and one game, Subnautica, even downloaded an update successfully. the program that has helped me numerous times with all my junction and symbolic link needs is called link shell extension, and it is a wonderful free little program. anyone that uses symbolic links or junctions with their steam install should get this program to help manage the links. it is essentially a frontend for the M$ program mklnk.exe but it makes things SOOOO much easier.

http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html

Ok, now the question is can you run the game and does it suffer from performance loss?
And there shouldn't be any wear on your SSD because as you said, files are not actually on SSD.

as soon as updates to various thing in steam finish updating, i am gonna find out if the games will actually load well or not. I will be using KSP as my test game.

[Eldin]

Have you tried it?
Will games load?

[Chris Solomon]

sorry, just got into steam.... after the latest update for windows 10 1803 the new laptop can not find my windows 7 laptop anymore. but the windows 7 laptop can find the windows 10 laptop...... *groan*

BUT.... while it was working (last night), I tried out three different games, Kerbal Space Program, Subnautica, and Star Trek Online. the games did work, but the initial loading of the game was slower than loading it locally on the old laptop. but once the inital loading and the loading of resources was finished, the game ran really well. it ran many, many, many, times better than it ran on my old laptop. I used max resolution and hightest detail settings for all three games (1920x1080) . all games ran at a minimum of 60 fps. the longer loading times did not bother me as much, but anybody else might find the loading times unacceptable. the only real performance issue i ran into, was in star trek online, where the longer load times made it impossible to do PVE/PVP events. single player content ran just fine however. also in subnautica since the game is a large open world game when i entered a new area where new terrain got loaded, there was a bit of a delay for the terrain to get loaded. also, because of the large size of the save file, it took signfigantly longer to load my save than it took to initially load the game. I wouldn't recommend this unless your using a high-ish end system with 16gb of ram or more.

in the mean time, i have learned that seagate makes what they are calling "expansion drives" (which are different than theirr back up drives?) that allow a person too add more drive space to an existing system. the 2tb portable version is only $34 on amazon. and the 4tb version os only $89. I am leaning towards the 4tb version since there is only about 400gb free on my 2tb game drive on my old laptop.

another option (which i do not know if it will work tech wise) for use in the near term, is to get a network cable and run it between the two laptops. I don'tknow if theycould communicate properly like this though. I can't hook either laptop up to the router, becuse the router is atthe opposite end of the house and is inconveinently located.

in the mean time, my new laptop has started to start downloading win10 1809, so hopefully the network issue will get solved.

next up will be investigating why my new laptopis connecting to my network at 802.11a even though both the router, adapter in the new laptop are wireless AC. it could be that windows is lying through it teeth tho. hopefully thats the case. I do hope that my network connection speed is not being limited by my slow internet connection (6mbps down, 1mbps up)

[Eldin]

You can connect two laptops via Ethernet cable, but you'll have to cut it and reconnect some wires differently.
https://youtu.be/7iSC9yXxVVc

And this would also allow your laptops to communicate faster than if they're connected through router.

[Chris Solomon]

hmm ok, interseting. upgrading to win10 1809 got my network connection back to my old laptop, but the credentials that windows was trying to use to access the old laptop were FUBAR. deleting them and letting windows make them again fixed that.

[Chris Solomon]

gonna give the remote library access over wif another try. just discovered new laptop was only connecting using 802.11a i.e. 54 mbps. fixed that issue, and am now connecting at 802.11ac also win 10 kept trying to turn off the smb 1.0 that neywork file sharing depends on.... so i put a stop to that....

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Linus did this...

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/962655-steam-caching-tutorial/

[Chris Solomon]

at first i was like who is linus? then i saw thelink, and then i am like ooooh, him!

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Yeah... A voice you have to get used to but seeing it in action at his company was pretty cool.

Just saying. You don't need to do it that way. Just an option.

[Chris Solomon]

holy molasses batman! the loading might be still a little low, but it is a lot faster at 545mbps than uit was at 54mbps

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

That is more like it, yeah.