Game in SSD, Updates in HDD

[WrathDemon]

I have a question, my friend has an ssd where he wants to put his warzone in but knowing Steam's update isn't like epicgames, it cancels the update if disk space is low. Is it possible to keep the game in ssd and its updates in his HDD where he got tons of space? He doesn't want to transfer the game to hdd just to download a 20 gb update for warzone. Then transfer is back into ssd.

[Bloody Moon]

It is not possible to separate the game from the updates, the updates are updated files that overwrite the game files and are not separate. Buy a larger SSD, HDDs are obsolete and slow.

[WrathDemon]

Originally posted by Bloody Moon:

It is not possible to separate the game from the updates, the updates are updated files that overwrite the game files and are not separate. Buy a larger SSD, HDDs are obsolete and slow.

Dude if my friend could buy a larger SSD I wouldn't be asking this question in the first place. Not everyone lives in the first world with low prices.

[Chompman]

Originally posted by WrathDemon:

Originally posted by Bloody Moon:

It is not possible to separate the game from the updates, the updates are updated files that overwrite the game files and are not separate. Buy a larger SSD, HDDs are obsolete and slow.

Dude if my friend could buy a larger SSD I wouldn't be asking this question in the first place. Not everyone lives in the first world with low prices.

Then your friend will need to make room in the ssd if they can as updates are not just a single zip or rar file that you then extract where you want.

[Pepe]

If by updates you mean the downloading cache, yes, you can through symlinks. If Steam is installed on the SSD and it uses the default Storage Library, you need to delete the existing "downloading" directory from inside Steam/.../steamapps on the SSD and replace it with a symlink with the same name "downloading" pointing to a directory on the HDD.

Windows CMD:

RD /S /Q "LinkName"

MD "Target"

MKLINK /D LinkName Target

RD /S /Q "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\downloading"

MD "D:\steam_downloads"

MKLINK /D "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\downloading" "D:\steam_downloads"

GNU/Linux Terminal:

rm -rf "LINK_NAME"

mkdir -p "TARGET"

ln -s TARGET LINK_NAME

rm -rf ~/".local/share/Steam/steamapps/downloading"

mkdir -p "/hdd_disk_mount/steam_downloads"

ln -s "/hdd_disk_mount/steam_downloads" ~/".local/share/Steam/steamapps/downloading"

If the Games library on the SSD is not on the default location of Steam Installation, you need to make a link for that as well. I see Steam is making a downloading directory in each Storage Library defined. I don't know the algorithm they use to pick the downloading cache directory. Better have a link for each library defined in Steam, if you want them to point to the HDD. You could use the same location on the HDD as the target, but I don't know what exactly is put there, it's not only app_ids folders, there might be lockfiles or something that could create some sort of conflict between concurrent updates from different Storage Libs.

[WrathDemon]

Originally posted by Pepe:

If by updates you mean the downloading cache, yes, you can through symlinks. If Steam is installed on the SSD and it uses the default Storage Library, you need to delete the existing "downloading" directory from inside Steam/.../steamapps on the SSD and replace it with a symlink with the same name "downloading" pointing to a directory on the HDD.

Windows CMD:

RD /S /Q "LinkName"

MD "Target"

MKLINK /D LinkName Target

RD /S /Q "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\downloading"

MD "D:\steam_downloads"

MKLINK /D "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\downloading" "D:\steam_downloads"

GNU/Linux Terminal:

rm -rf "LINK_NAME"

mkdir -p "TARGET"

ln -s TARGET LINK_NAME

rm -rf ~/".local/share/Steam/steamapps/downloading"

mkdir -p "/hdd_disk_mount/steam_downloads"

ln -s "/hdd_disk_mount/steam_downloads" ~/".local/share/Steam/steamapps/downloading"

If the Games library on the SSD is not on the default location of Steam Installation, you need to make a link for that as well. I see Steam is making a downloading directory in each Storage Library defined. I don't know the algorithm they use to pick the downloading cache directory. Better have a link for each library defined in Steam, if you want them to point to the HDD. You could use the same location on the HDD as the target, but I don't know what exactly is put there, it's not only app_ids folders, there might be lockfiles or something that could create some sort of conflict between concurrent updates from different Storage Libs.

Well my friends issue is game update, not updates for steam store itself, the game is running fine and all but the updates are too big and going out of size for the ssd as his ssd is relatively small, he's only got enough space for the game and plus 10gbs. So that's why i wanted to is it possible for the game to download the games update patch files in another steamlibrary on another drive, suppose game is in D (ssd) and game updates in E (hdd). So will your method work for this and there wont be any catch for it right?

[Yujah]

Originally posted by WrathDemon:

So that's why i wanted to [know] is it possible for the game to download the games update patch files in another steamlibrary on another drive, suppose game is in D (ssd) and game updates in E (hdd). So will your method work for this and there wont be any catch for it right?

It would (work). That is: Steam downloads an update for a game in say D:\SteamLibrary to D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\downloads\; what they are having you do is delete that directory (when you do, best to first close down Steam) and recreate it as "a redirect" to any other location, say E:\steam_downloads.

They added a possible catch insofar that if you have multiple Steam libraries, say the default C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam library and a secondary D:\SteamLibrary, that you may want to redirect all of them, and use individual locations; say E:\steam_downloads\C\ and E:\steam_downloads\D\.

You create as per above that/those redirect-location/s yourself; use any names/location you care for. Steam would happily still download to what it thinks is the standard locations; things would through the symlink(s) be redirected to E: on the filesystem level only.

Untested by me (on Windows) but if Steam isn't trying to be too clever for its own good, there'd be no catches. Undoing is moreover a simple matter of deleting those created symlinks in the libraries again.