"Failed to add new Steam library folder"

[Dennis[DK]]

I have bought a new computer, with two drives: A SSD-drive (C:) and a regular drive (D:).
I have installed Steam om drive D:, and set drive D: to default for game installation. But some games, such as Civilization V and Team Fortress 2, I want to install om drive C:.
But when I want to set the installation for drive C:, I get the following message:
"Failed to add new Steam library folder".
Someone who can help?

[Bench]

Have you tried to run Steam as Administrator?

[Dennis[DK]]

Yes. It is when I run Steam as administrator, that the above-mentioned message appears. The folder is actual created, but then the message appears.

When I run Steam in regular mode, following happens:
Creating new Steam library folder
C:\Program Files (x86)\
New Folder... (I call Steam)
Then it says "Failed to create a folder, this drive is read-only"

I also tried:
Create a Steam folder manually in C:\Program Files (x86)\
Then it says "New Steam library folder must be writeable"

By some reason, one of these two messages also some times appears, when I run in Administrator mode.

[Dennis[DK]]

It seems, that I have solved the problem. I don't know precisely how. But I uninstalled Steam (which included already installed games - that was waste of 7 good hours...), and installed it on C drive instead. And now there are no problem with install games two different places.
It seems, that Steam don't like if one install games on two different drives at the same time (after I reinstalled Steam, I only install games at one drive at the time, which I don't think about before the reinstallation).

[BA|Oddbod]

I had this same error coming up when I tried installing a new game I'd just bought and directed it to my D: drive, as my C drive didn't have room for the new game. It kept giving me the error until I noticed that Steam was in the process of downloading updates to some other games I already had installed.

I just waited for it to finish that process and then it was able to create the new library and start downloading/installing the new game.

[Ricky]

I put all my steam games on my computers main drive onto the destination drive and then it worked. It appears steam doesn't like to have libraries on two separate drives.

[killerelite]

it happened to me
It was because a game was updating

[Bonehead]

while this is an old discussion, i had this issue myself (steam installed in D drive) - still not realised how to force a steam library sub-folder into my program files folder, but.. i created a steam library sub-folder directly into the root (C:\SteamLibrary).. something weird going on with the folder settings being write protected - hope this might brighten someones day in the future though

[M. Walrus]

Yup updating game caused the failed library add

Updates in steam are rather obtrusive, freezing up at times, giving weird errors and seemingly simple things like adding a library folder fail.

[Daczster]

Hello everyone I had an issue with this also, my main steam folder is on my D drive I solved it by downloading steam from the site onto my Main Drive ...I wasted so much time on this for something so simple :\ lol.

Edit: I found out that I couldn't play my other games on my D drive after reinstalling steam on my C Drive but all I needed to do was follow Ethan J's post everything fell into place after creating a new folder from C to D. (since the games were already installed on D).

[Ajetz]

Easy fix for me was to stop my downloads on steam and try again ^^

[Darthside1]

Originally posted by Bonehead:

while this is an old discussion, i had this issue myself (steam installed in D drive) - still not realised how to force a steam library sub-folder into my program files folder, but.. i created a steam library sub-folder directly into the root (C:\SteamLibrary).. something weird going on with the folder settings being write protected - hope this might brighten someones day in the future though

Hello Bonehead from one year ago, this was helpful and saved me a lot of time. Thanks!

//A grateful soul from the future!

[Jane Doe]

Ok so using the pause button to halt my updates worked! I suggest everyone to try it atleast once!

[Hogan]

Have you tried to run Steam as Administrator?

[rebb]

I really really would like to know why having other games in "Updating" state has anything to do with this ? What is the developer reasoning here ? It seems dubious at best. I have a whole lot of Games in Updating state, and am just trying to get a very giant game ( i hate those ) to work again that i previously moved to a different partition. It's apparently not possible until i ran ALL of the updates ? This is silly, sorry.

[Aceland]

Originally posted by Bonehead:

while this is an old discussion, i had this issue myself (steam installed in D drive) - still not realised how to force a steam library sub-folder into my program files folder, but.. i created a steam library sub-folder directly into the root (C:\SteamLibrary).. something weird going on with the folder settings being write protected - hope this might brighten someones day in the future though

Thanks buddy! That worked for me :)