How To Move Steam Games (Symlinks)

How To Move Steam Games (Symlinks)

Enter this in the command line: mklink /J "Name of Steam folder you are creating here" "Name of folder where Steam files are here"

In this video I give a full tutorial on how to move a Steam game from one hard drive to another. You may want to do this for several reasons, perhaps because you are out of space on your main HDD, you want to save space on your SSD or you want to install Steam games on an external hard drive. The method I use for Windows Vista and Windows 7 is called Symlinks or Symbolic Links.

[SuperAwesomeCloudMan]

You can actually install Steam games on a harddrive that doesn't have Windows installed on it, as long as you install steam in that drive, I installed Steam in my D drive which is not my SSD, and now I put Far Cry 3 and Borderlands over there, thanks for the tutorial man

[DNB_connoisseur]

This is still great today, Even for applications that don't let you choose which directory to install them on.

[AustinSV]

Saved 50 GB doing this. If you want a faster way to copy over data, use TeraCopy. Much faster with moving files than Explorer.

[Jezze]

You don't need this anymore. I just installed Steam on my HDD and not my SSD where the Windows is. All the games go in my HDD as well. Finally it's possible without tricks:P

[austinevans]

@thehostler0 No, Steam only installs games in the directory Steam is installed in. You have to use this to be able to install games anywhere else.

[Thosemenoverthere]

I just moved my whole Steam folder, worked just fine.

[austinevans]

@arvin1212 Just copy over whatever game you want to the other hard drive, rename the original file and then make the symlink. After you make sure it worked properly you can feel free to delete the game off your main drive.

[austinevans]

@MechaSonicHD Yes. For XP you can do this as well but you need to use a program, just Google creating a symlink in Windows XP.

[mavamaarten]

Awesome tutorial ! You talk a little bit fast but it worked flawlessly. :)

[austinevans]

@viewer713 No. If you do that Steam will just not see the files in the right place and you'll have to redownload.

[Somone]

@Fay7666 Because all Steam programs are ran by Steam itself. If you look at a Steam shortcut on your desktop, you will see it runs something like this:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam.exe" -applaunch 400
The '-applaunch 400' part is called a parameter. This tells steam that you want to launch the steam program with the ID of 400. Each Steam program has its own ID and Steam knows where it needs to look for it. If you would just take those files away, steam would not be able to launch the game

[sasukebattle]

Thx man my C drive was onlu 90 GB but my D drive was 500 GB, you saved my pc!

[austinevans]

@FrylizFtw Just make sure you have quotation marks around the names of the folders.

[thehostler]

You can set the installation path of steam at the installation wizzard. Then when u install a game it will be installed on the hdd you installed steam on. Correct me if im wrong though!

[MenWithHats]

Thanks man. Clear, concise, well-enunciated.

[mesaoneCCK]

In Win 7, quotations on the destination folder are not needed. I just moved my Skyrim directory to my SSD, and it worked even without quotes. I did put quotes around the first one though.

[jvlucas]

Thank you so much for this tutorial, i did it while i was watching. you are the best. is funny i was a subscriber of yours even before i watched this video.

[MatthewTiger]

Make sure you use '/' when specifying the options for the symlink instead of '\'. the command should look like > mklink /J "TARGET" "LINK". So this would create a link to target from link. The quotes are necessary around the path names to include any spaces in the path names.

[Ostikylskapet]

You can, if you reinstall Steam it allows you to chose where is shall save all the Steam related stuff.

[LTopher]

Steam as a program takes up very little space, so installing it on your HDD wouldn't make much sense. Installing the steam games on your HDD would be much slower than your SSD, but if you have a small SSD (or a well-sized SSD and a lot of games), then you may want to have your less-played games on your HDD. The game would only be faster if you have it installed on the SSD, no matter where Steam is actually installed.