Can't move game to another drive (says it has shared content)

[Doodlebops]

I am trying to move Spellforce 3: Reforced to another drive through steam and it says I cannot move it because it has 'shared content'. But, I don't want to have to download 100GB again. Is there a way around this?

[xarvn]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grieving_Tatsunoko:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย xarvn:

You can do one of the following:
1. Uninstall game and then download/install in desired location.
2. Make a backup of the game through Steam backup, uninstall game, and then finally restore game in desired location.
3. Manually move the game and corresponding .acf file to desired location. Steam should download content that was shared, duplicating it in the new location as necessary when you run the game.
edit: Could not verify if this is the case for these particular games at this time.

tried option 1/2, got a message in the install window that read "install folder cannot be changed"

tried manually moving the game, then uninstalling it from the old location, and then re-installing, again received the "install folder cannot be changed" message

really annoying, because Sourcemods only work if they're on the C drive, and for whatever reason, despite having ALL of the Source SDK's installed on my C drive, none of the sourcemods that worked for me not even two years ago, no longer get past the initial loading screen

Appologies. You are correct; option 1 and 2 do not work. For option 3. Be sure to exit out of Steam completely before moving files. Once you move the "Half-Life 2" folder from, for example, C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common to D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common, be sure to move "appmanifest_220.acf" from the corresponding steamapps folders. After you do this, start the Steam client, go to Steam>Settings>Storage and check to see where Half-Life 2 is installed. You should see that Half-Life 2 has been moved to the desired drive and there is no need to uninstall anything. The game as before will show in the library as being installed. The only difference is that it has been moved manually to a different location.
As to mods, I don't have much experience with them and was not aware they require the game to be installed in C:. Perhaps someone in the HL2 community forum might help you with incompatibility problems.

[xarvn]

On further thought, it might be that the sourcemods require all of the valve/source games to also be installed in drive C. Crunchyfrog's suggestion (post 13) may have been the best one to follow.

[crunchyfrog]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย xarvn:

On further thought, it might be that the sourcemods require all of the valve/source games to also be installed in drive C. Crunchyfrog's suggestion (post 13) may have been the best one to follow.

Yeah there's often a few intricacies about this as Source games often share a lot of resources and the more you have, the more complicated it obviously gets.

SO I thought the simplest option is to just cut to the chase and deal with them all in one go or erase them and start again.

[Grieving_Tatsunoko]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย xarvn:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grieving_Tatsunoko:

tried option 1/2, got a message in the install window that read "install folder cannot be changed"

tried manually moving the game, then uninstalling it from the old location, and then re-installing, again received the "install folder cannot be changed" message

really annoying, because Sourcemods only work if they're on the C drive, and for whatever reason, despite having ALL of the Source SDK's installed on my C drive, none of the sourcemods that worked for me not even two years ago, no longer get past the initial loading screen

Appologies. You are correct; option 1 and 2 do not work. For option 3. Be sure to exit out of Steam completely before moving files. Once you move the "Half-Life 2" folder from, for example, C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common to D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common, be sure to move "appmanifest_220.acf" from the corresponding steamapps folders. After you do this, start the Steam client, go to Steam>Settings>Storage and check to see where Half-Life 2 is installed. You should see that Half-Life 2 has been moved to the desired drive and there is no need to uninstall anything. The game as before will show in the library as being installed. The only difference is that it has been moved manually to a different location.
As to mods, I don't have much experience with them and was not aware they require the game to be installed in C:. Perhaps someone in the HL2 community forum might help you with incompatibility problems.

moving the appmanifest_220.acf file appears to have solved my first problem. that is, the inability to move the install location for HL2 + the episodes.
no idea if it fixed my Sourcemod issue yet, will check back once i've had time to test

[Grieving_Tatsunoko]

roughly 50% of my installed Sourcemods now work, mostly those running on episode 2.
ones like Dangerous world, Strider Mountain, Offshore, Lost under the Snow, and Precursor don't get past the loading screen before crashing to library. the common denominator between those is that they all run off the various SDK's instead of Episode 2. more troubleshooting in my future i guess

[xarvn]

You may end up having to move all the Valve/Source games to C drive. There of course may still be issues due to incompatibility with current (updated) versions of the games.

[Grieving_Tatsunoko]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย xarvn:

You may end up having to move all the Valve/Source games to C drive. There of course may still be issues due to incompatibility with current (updated) versions of the games.

that's the thing, i've already done that lol. HL2 + episodes, Lost coast, HL2 Update, L4D, L4D2, Portal, Portal 2, all are on my C: Drive now.

(and yeah i expect Strider Mountain to give me trouble, it's very old. but it was built for SDK 2007)
i'm just surprised that Offshore is giving me trouble

[crunchyfrog]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Grieving_Tatsunoko:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย xarvn:

You may end up having to move all the Valve/Source games to C drive. There of course may still be issues due to incompatibility with current (updated) versions of the games.

that's the thing, i've already done that lol. HL2 + episodes, Lost coast, HL2 Update, L4D, L4D2, Portal, Portal 2, all are on my C: Drive now.

(and yeah i expect Strider Mountain to give me trouble, it's very old. but it was built for SDK 2007)
i'm just surprised that Offshore is giving me trouble

It might be that there's conflicts in this case. With shared files on games that can happen when you run too many mods or too many different games. It can end up wrecking files that another game uses.

The trick is process of elimination. Add one and see if everything else still works. Then add another until it breaks.

Then you can find out which are the culprits.

[its_raza]

I had the same issue with trying to move Hitman 3 to another drive when I had Hitman 2 bought and installed from Steam as well. Turned out the Hitman 3 was continuing some of the content from Hitman 2 and vice versa.

[Fazeball]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย its_raza:

I had the same issue with trying to move Hitman 3 to another drive when I had Hitman 2 bought and installed from Steam as well. Turned out the Hitman 3 was continuing some of the content from Hitman 2 and vice versa.

I assume steam either isn't smart enough to handle cases like this, or the devs f*cked up (like OP's problem with spellforce 3).

there's always the option to copy the folder + .acf manually (the file which tells steam which game is which and what to do with it), that should always work. that's basically what steam does when moving files between storage folders. good luck if you have several dozens games installed tho...

to get the appid, just open the properties and check under updates, or steamdb. the .acf file is the one with the ID in it. usually it's one file per folder (game), unless you got another edge case like spellforce 3 again where two different files use the same folder - so to move everything you'd have to find all the .acf files
remember tho that every .acf file should be an entry in your library, so it's not impossible to find, just check all relevant games - in spellforce 3's case you'd need both reforced and versus (and possible expansions, since they got their own entries).
no idea how hitman 3 handles it.


if there's still an error simply trying to copy/move the folder via explorer, that's a windows/file system problem steam can't really do anything about anyway, again like in OP's case where spellforce 3 creates a folder with an empty name looping back to itself (and it's not a symlink or anything), meaning it can't be moved or deleted (without deleting the whole game). there are ways around it like using the 8.3 name - if the option is enabled tho.
otherwise another "easy" fix is using 7zip. browse to the folder, rename it (delete doesn't work, since it's looping back it tries to delete itself), then delete it. after that windows can move the spellforce 3 folder.
also works with folders windows can't handle in general, like folders with certain letters etc.

another tip in case it's just for a backup: some games have A LOT of small files. again, spellforce 3 has like several thousand 1kb files, copying those will take longer than it needs to (unless you copy from SSD to SSD).
7zip (or any other program like it) can help with that again, simply create a new file with the store compression, it copies everything into a single file (without compression), same space but much faster.

[bfh47334]

I just move manually the games then uninstall it on steam and install to the driver that I've move.

[rfp80402]

Unless you can work that out, you're kind of stuck.

[Geministorm]

I know I'm late to the party, but when doing a search for this issue, this is the first thread that shows up, so........

If you have something like Fallout 4 or any Bethesda game and also have the Creation Kit installed through Steam, uninstall that first and then try again. Worked for me on Fallout 4 install.

[Geministorm]

Remove CK:
- Right-click, "Fallout 4: Creation Kit" --> Manage --> Uninstall (confirm all choices to proceed with uninstall)

Move Fallout 4:
- Steam --> Settings --> Storage --> pick the drive where Fallout 4 currently resides --> select the checkbox next to Fallout 4 --> select "Move" button at bottom of window --> select drive where you want to move to --> takes a bit to move the content over, be patient

Note: Don't try and setup the directory structure ahead of time, Steam wants to do that for you and will complain (not execute the move) if it can't

[HeavyGustav]

Happened to me for Warhammer 40k: Inquisitor. Turned out that's because I have Inquisitor - Prophecy installed as well. I uninstalled it and was able to move the base game. Hope it helps.