Installing steam to somewhere other than Program Files

[kevkiev]

Had a failure of my HDDs last week and now that everythings fixed I'd like to install Steam to a non-Program files location. Which brings me to something I've always wondered - do you have to do anything with the "my documents/games" folder that holds saves, INIs etc, (looks like in Win7 that's in the 'library") or is that something not to even worry about? How about if I install Steam to a completely separate hard drive from the usual C;/ drive, does the location of "my games" become any sort of issue then? (Though I guess its automatically generated, so I'm guessing "no") I guess I've never really understood whether the desktop is part of the C: drive or not, thus this potentially silly-sounding question. I hope that made some sense.

[SariDecember]

I did this some weeks ago. Just drag and drop the Steam folder to whatever location you like and execute the steam exe. It will restart/reinitialise, you'll have to confirm your account with a code you'll get sent be email and there you go. Be warned, moving the steam folder could take some time (105 GB in my case) so better get a cup of coffee!

The savegames will stay where they are and won't get affected by the location change.

[maboru]

You don't have to worry about the save folder because that won't change no matter where the game and Steam are. Here's a painless way to do what you want. - http://lifehacker.com/5626931/steam-mover-relocates-applications-to-free-up-space-on-your-primary-drive

[kevkiev]

good stuff, thanks for the replies.

 

kinda figured the games folder was a non-issue but it's nice to be sure.

 

And for me it should be easy peasy as, with my HDD's going south, everythings brand new and I don't even have to move anything. I can just set the initial steam download to some other location, say "C:Cant Stand UAC/" or something like that.

[Sunnie]

I suggest putting Steam and all the rest of your games on a secondary HDD. System drives tend to be the ones going bad, I have had more than my share of system drives take a dump, but I never lose any of my games or other data that resides on another HDD.

[kevkiev]

I suggest putting Steam and all the rest of your games on a secondary HDD. System drives tend to be the ones going bad, I have had more than my share of system drives take a dump, but I never lose any of my games or other data that resides on another HDD.

 

I've been thinking about this as well. Currently, I have my OS & steam/games/apps on 2x500G HDD's in Raid 0 and a 1TB for everything else (was thinking of getting an external HDD for backups). I was thinking it might be better to ditch Raid and put the OS on one of the 500Gs, Steam/ Games/ apps on the other 500G and everything else on the 1T (again maybe an external for backups) Seems like a bit of wasted space to put the OS on a dedicated 500G HDD, but HDDs are cheap enough I wouldn't care too much. Waddya think? I've been wrestling with the best way to set up these 3HDDs.

[Sunnie]

The OS will run a bit faster if it's on a dedicated HDD, since you won't have a lot of fragmentation issues with system files, nor have to seek through a ton of files. I currently have my OS and my normal tools (Creative suite, Office, etc) on a 1tb drive, then I have a 2tb raid3 where I have all my games and Steam, and I have a 4tb raid3 where I store all my source data for the media work I do.

Not losing any of that data when the system drives sploads = priceless!

[kevkiev]

Thanks for the comments. I'm really thinkin' hard about how best to set these up. I'm totally hearin' ya on the explosion thing. I'm realizing more and more exactly how much I lost on the HDD's demise. That'll probably be going on for awhile, lol. (Nervous laughter.)