Moving Steam Library?

[Blitz4]

I don't have any games installed and just installed Steam a new. How do I move or create a Steam Library at C:\Games instead of C:\Program Files... ?

[n64link]

Top left corner of steam window STEAM>SETTINGS>DOWNLOADS Top button should say "Steam Library folders"

[Blitz4]

Originally posted by n64link:

Top left corner of steam window STEAM>SETTINGS>DOWNLOADS Top button should say "Steam Library folders"

How do I move my library to a different folder on the same drive?

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by Blitz4:

Originally posted by n64link:

Top left corner of steam window STEAM>SETTINGS>DOWNLOADS Top button should say "Steam Library folders"

How do I move my library to a different folder on the same drive?

If it was any other drive than your C: drive, you'd simply just move it. But since you most likely have Steam installed in it's default location in the Program Files folder, you'll have to uninstall Steam and reinstall it to folder you want your library to be. There is always a library folder at the Steam install location and you can't have more than one library folder per drive.

[Glimmer]

If you have a thumb drive or some other removable drive, could temporarily create a Library folder on that, remove the initial folder on C and then add a new folder in the desired location.

[Blitz4]

Originally posted by Glimmer:

If you have a thumb drive or some other removable drive, could temporarily create a Library folder on that, remove the initial folder on C and then add a new folder in the desired location.

Tried that and it didn't work. The new update to Steam Library doesn't allow that anymore. You can only create your C: library in the same directory that steam is installed, which messes up the directory structure now.

Edit: So the only way around this, if say you have one $1000 nand drive, is to create different partitions on that drive which you have to shrink/extend depending on how much you want to dedicate to Steam and then to everything else. There is a small advantage there that a higher chunk size might make it faster. Option B is to create a hard link which NTFS still doesn't support. Option C is to create a mapped drive to a folder which I haven't tested yet. If Option C works then Steam should allow moving your Steam Library on the C: drive.

Edit2: Good. Tried Option C got the error "New Steam library folder can't be the drive root."
I got $10 says Option B works, but you'd need a block-level filesystem. Which is stupid.

[rawWwRrr]

Steam doesn't HAVE to be installed in its default location. You can create a C:\GAMES\ library if you want. You just have to install Steam directly to it.

[Blitz4]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Steam doesn't HAVE to be installed in its default location. You can create a C:\GAMES\ library if you want. You just have to install Steam directly to it.

I imagine this is not a problem on Linux, Mac or Steam Deck that uses Arch (awesome).

For Windows. The issue is security, expectations & convenience.

A folder outside of Program Files won't use the same permissions by default, for example C: subfolders allow any user full control. Program Files only admin users have full control and after they pass that UAC thingy.

Expectations, when you install any game or program, it asks where you want to install it. You can't do that with Steam, you must install it in your Steam Library. That's fine, except now in the case where you can't specify where to install that Steam directory. It's not normal and there's a few issues doing that causes.

Convenience. What if I want my Steam Library in my Dropbox folder to always back it up? Sure, not super smart for games that constantly write tons of data to disk which is more than you can upload, but I don't know of any games like that. Usually games edit some logs, configs and save files, not much else. So now I should install my entire Steam install into Dropbox, that goes right back to security issues. Dropbox is for sure not flexible at all and that's by design. This feature I'm talking about, Steam used to have it.

There's other issues that it causes. I get not putting more than one steam library on your C:. in the past you could delete your default C: steam library if you had one on another drive by making that other one default, then you could create a new steam library on C: in another location and make that default. You can move games from one steam library to another, why not move steam library to an entirely different folder on the same drive, no matter if it's C:,D:,etc.

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by Blitz4:

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Steam doesn't HAVE to be installed in its default location. You can create a C:\GAMES\ library if you want. You just have to install Steam directly to it.

I imagine this is not a problem on Linux, Mac or Steam Deck that uses Arch (awesome).

For Windows. The issue is security, expectations & convenience.

A folder outside of Program Files won't use the same permissions by default, for example C: subfolders allow any user full control. Program Files only admin users have full control and after they pass that UAC thingy.

Expectations, when you install any game or program, it asks where you want to install it. You can't do that with Steam, you must install it in your Steam Library. That's fine, except now in the case where you can't specify where to install that Steam directory. It's not normal and there's a few issues doing that causes.

Convenience. What if I want my Steam Library in my Dropbox folder to always back it up? Sure, not super smart for games that constantly write tons of data to disk which is more than you can upload, but I don't know of any games like that. Usually games edit some logs, configs and save files, not much else. So now I should install my entire Steam install into Dropbox, that goes right back to security issues. Dropbox is for sure not flexible at all and that's by design. This feature I'm talking about, Steam used to have it.

There's other issues that it causes. I get not putting more than one steam library on your C:. in the past you could delete your default C: steam library if you had one on another drive by making that other one default, then you could create a new steam library on C: in another location and make that default. You can move games from one steam library to another, why not move steam library to an entirely different folder on the same drive, no matter if it's C:,D:,etc.

Obviously you have concerns well beyond you're original simple question of ...

Originally posted by Blitz4:

How do I move or create a Steam Library at C:\Games instead of C:\Program Files... ?

The simple answer is to install Steam directly to a C:\Games folder. You can't get around the one library per drive limitation. There used to be a mapping trick that involved tricking out Steam into thinking a drive existed where it didn't, but from what I've read that's been closed since a recent update. I never utilized it. I always kept my Steam library on a separate drive, or at least on it's own partition on one-drive systems.

[Blitz4]

Yes. There's quite a few issues with this new update disabling the feature. It's just time consuming typing those that I'm aware of.

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Originally posted by Blitz4:

How do I move or create a Steam Library at C:\Games instead of C:\Program Files... ?

The simple answer is to install Steam directly to a C:\Games folder. You can't get around the one library per drive limitation. There used to be a mapping trick that involved tricking out Steam into thinking a drive existed where it didn't, but from what I've read that's been closed since a recent update. I never utilized it. I always kept my Steam library on a separate drive, or at least on it's own partition on one-drive systems.

I tried mapping drives and using subst command. That doesn't work. Steam detects that as the same drive.

So here's some ideas of new solutions that may make this function as it did.


* Create a second D: partition on the C: drive. Install Steam on D:. Then create a Library on C:
* Plug in a usb drive D: Install Steam on D: Then create a Library on C:
* Install Windows in a VM using any Layer2 VM manager onto Windows. Create one virtual disk with two virtual partitions on it C: and D: and install Windows to virtual C: then install Steam to virtual D: and setup a Library to virtual C: -- yet both virtual C: and virtual D: are both a huge file on the real C: drive
* Install Windows in a VM using a Layer1 VM manager. Use ZFS for the file system. Create one dataset for the VM. Same thing as above.
* Install Windows Workstations on HPFS instead of NTFS. Same as above.


VM's will slow down most games. You need to use a Layer1 VM with a GPU passthrough to get close to normal frames. But it won't be 100% as there's always some overhead with that.

Say you're using Windows 10 Home and aren't using VM's or multiple drives. That's got to be quite a few number of people. Say that one drive is a nand / nvme drive. Now you have to mess around with partition management before you can play your games. Not all games need that. But if you're into modding, it maybe suggested to do this by the mod authors.

Like I said, it's just time consuming typing all this stuff. It makes no sense having to go to this level of workaround just because you only have 1 physical drive in a PC.

[nokturnal]

I would expect that in 2022 when customization is king that you can select which folder on C is your game library and still leave installation where it belongs (Program Files) but no...
I dont have games on Steam that I frequently play so I didnt install it. With sunseting of Bethesda Launcher and subsequent transfer of all games to Steam that changes and I dont like this one bit.

I guess the best solution is to install Steam where you want your library to be. If someone needs to do this after they installed Steam and/or games you can also move the folder manually. Instructions are here: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4BD4-4528-6B2E-8327

[adrbin]

To manually change path of steam library or create more libraries on one drive, just edit these two files in steam app folder:
..\Steam\config\libraryfolders.vdf
..\Steam\steamapps\libraryfolders.vdf

Change path to whatever you want or add more numbers:

"libraryfolders"
{
"0"
{
"path" "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam"
"label" ""
"contentid" "0000000000000000000"
"totalsize" "0"
"update_clean_bytes_tally" "00000000000"
"time_last_update_corruption" "0"
"apps"
{
"000000" "0000000000"
}
}
"1"
{
"path" "D:\\Games\\Steam"
"label" ""
"contentid" "0000000000000000000"
"totalsize" "0"
"update_clean_bytes_tally" "00000000000"
"time_last_update_corruption" "0"
"apps"
{
"000000" "0000000000"
}
}
"2"
{
"path" "D:\\Games\\Steam2"
"label" ""
"contentid" "0000000000000000000"
"totalsize" "0"
"update_clean_bytes_tally" "00000000000"
"time_last_update_corruption" "0"
"apps"
{
"000000" "0000000000"
}
}

I have several drives and have "games/steam" folder on each one. Why? Simply because i want to and because I don't have enough space for to have all games in just one. And I could imagine that someone want two folders on same drive, for example to have small games in one and bigger in another or vr/non-vr, who knows.. It always was possible until recently. Now you can in settings create just one library per drive and to root only. I guess newer update - less options is fashion nowadays. I had to edit vdf files and it worked great.

[networldsystems]

This is the answer I was looking for!

I have a Game Libraries folder on several drives and have all the game clients (Steam, Epic, etc.) store inside that folder. Added a new drive and couldn't set the Steam folder to my desired location within Steam. I installed a single game to the new library, shut down Steam, moved & renamed the folder as I wanted, edited the files and restarted Steam. Viola!

Thank you!

[calinet6]

I have no idea if this will help anyone, but I had an issue using Steam for Linux beta that wouldn't let me select my Steam folder in my C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam folder, and said "Library folder is not writable", so I wanted to move it to the root of my drive. That would break my Windows installation, however.

IF you have an NTFS (C) drive mounted in Linux, you can do this:

Create the folder (C Drive Mount Point)/SteamLibrary, then in that folder, run the following to symlink your Windows steamapps folder to the root drive's:

ln -s ../Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Steam/steamapps/ steamapps

Then add the whole drive in your Storage config in Steam for Linux. It will use it happily without caring about the symlink.

[mschol]

Originally posted by adrbin:

To manually change path of steam library or create more libraries on one drive, just edit these two files in steam app folder:
..\Steam\config\libraryfolders.vdf
..\Steam\steamapps\libraryfolders.vdf

Change path to whatever you want or add more numbers:

"libraryfolders"
{
"0"
{
"path" "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam"
"label" ""
"contentid" "0000000000000000000"
"totalsize" "0"
"update_clean_bytes_tally" "00000000000"
"time_last_update_corruption" "0"
"apps"
{
"000000" "0000000000"
}
}
"1"
{
"path" "D:\\Games\\Steam"
"label" ""
"contentid" "0000000000000000000"
"totalsize" "0"
"update_clean_bytes_tally" "00000000000"
"time_last_update_corruption" "0"
"apps"
{
"000000" "0000000000"
}
}
"2"
{
"path" "D:\\Games\\Steam2"
"label" ""
"contentid" "0000000000000000000"
"totalsize" "0"
"update_clean_bytes_tally" "00000000000"
"time_last_update_corruption" "0"
"apps"
{
"000000" "0000000000"
}
}

I have several drives and have "games/steam" folder on each one. Why? Simply because i want to and because I don't have enough space for to have all games in just one. And I could imagine that someone want two folders on same drive, for example to have small games in one and bigger in another or vr/non-vr, who knows.. It always was possible until recently. Now you can in settings create just one library per drive and to root only. I guess newer update - less options is fashion nowadays. I had to edit vdf files and it worked great.

tried to change default steam folder to move it outside of the installation folder and
no matter what i do. steam always reverts back to the default install location inside the steam installation folder

[Ralsh]

Originally posted by adrbin:

To manually change path of steam library or create more libraries on one drive, just edit these two files in steam app folder:
..\Steam\config\libraryfolders.vdf
..\Steam\steamapps\libraryfolders.vdf

Change path to whatever you want or add more numbers:

"libraryfolders"
{
"0"
{
"path" "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Steam"
"label" ""
"contentid" "0000000000000000000"
"totalsize" "0"
"update_clean_bytes_tally" "00000000000"
"time_last_update_corruption" "0"
"apps"
{
"000000" "0000000000"
}
}
"1"
{
"path" "D:\\Games\\Steam"
"label" ""
"contentid" "0000000000000000000"
"totalsize" "0"
"update_clean_bytes_tally" "00000000000"
"time_last_update_corruption" "0"
"apps"
{
"000000" "0000000000"
}
}
"2"
{
"path" "D:\\Games\\Steam2"
"label" ""
"contentid" "0000000000000000000"
"totalsize" "0"
"update_clean_bytes_tally" "00000000000"
"time_last_update_corruption" "0"
"apps"
{
"000000" "0000000000"
}
}

I have several drives and have "games/steam" folder on each one. Why? Simply because i want to and because I don't have enough space for to have all games in just one. And I could imagine that someone want two folders on same drive, for example to have small games in one and bigger in another or vr/non-vr, who knows.. It always was possible until recently. Now you can in settings create just one library per drive and to root only. I guess newer update - less options is fashion nowadays. I had to edit vdf files and it worked great.

Thanks a lot!!!!!!