Do not put mods/downloads into your Vortex install directory!

[ghj290]

 

 

I don't install anything to C, let alone Program Files. As a general rule of thumb, last time I knew, that was the first thing to avoid when modding (ie avoid putting games and mods and modding tools to protected directories).

 

This is a bad rule.

It's probably advice given for Morrowind, 15 years ago by people who didn't know better at the time and since then people follow it like it's been brought down from a mountain on a stone tablet.

But it's not a good idea today, this problem is testament to that.

 

Vortex is a standard conformant windows application, using a standard installer with default settings. It behaves like 95% of Windows applications out there, yet people manage to screw up their install and delete their data by using non-default install locations and manually changing their settings.

At that point you should ask yourself if maybe your "house rules" are standing in your way more than they help you.

 

The reason people may have advised you to avoid putting modding tools into "program files" is because those modding tools tried to write files (logs, mods, ...) to their installation directory. Vortex doesn't do that, so the advise doesn't apply.

The reason people may have advised you to avoid putting games into "program files" is because otherwise the write protection would prevent you from putting mods in there. But you could just as well disable the write protection punctually for the data directory. This is less work and more secure.

And most of the time you don't even have to do that because Steam (by default afaik) already allows writing to all game directories. So again, this advise doesn't apply for most games today.

 

I don't put new programs into my C: drive because it fills up so fast with other programs that demand that drive. My C: drive fills up faster than a glass of water from a tanker truck, so screw that rule for THAT reason. I'm being PRACTICAL, not "old rules stupid."

 

I have nothing installed to my "C:" except my operating system; the default Documents and Libraries have been moved to my "F:" drive along with all "User" folders. All non-game software, Office, AV, Browsers etc. are installed to that same "F:" drive. This is because I have a relativity small SSD (128GB) boot drive that I like to leave as OS only to minimise the amount of space used.

All Game are installed to either my platter drive "D:" if loading speed isn't an issue or my M2 drive "E:" if it is.

I have used the custom installer to install Vortex to D:\games\vortex but was a little concerned to see that, even with this custom installation, Vortex still stored it Mods in <appdata>\vortex\etc. and was using 16GB of my "C:" drive for mod storage. I have now moved that folder within Vortex (thanks for giving us the option to do this) to D:\Games\Votexmodlibrary and this seems to work fine.

Considering that a lot of PC's are sold with small SSD "C:" Drives and large "D:" Data drives it does seem a little cavalier to store what could be may gigabytes of data (if multiple games are managed in Vortex) on "C;" with no warning as Vortex is being installed.

[Tannin42]

I have nothing installed to my "C:" except my operating system; the default Documents and Libraries have been moved to my "F:" drive along with all "User" folders. All non-game software, Office, AV, Browsers etc. are installed to that same "F:" drive. This is because I have a relativity small SSD (128GB) boot drive that I like to leave as OS only to minimise the amount of space used.

 

All Game are installed to either my platter drive "D:" if loading speed isn't an issue or my M2 drive "E:" if it is.

I have used the custom installer to install Vortex to D:\games\vortex but was a little concerned to see that, even with this custom installation, Vortex still stored it Mods in <appdata>\vortex\etc. and was using 16GB of my "C:" drive for mod storage. I have now moved that folder within Vortex (thanks for giving us the option to do this) to D:\Games\Votexmodlibrary and this seems to work fine.

Considering that a lot of PC's are sold with small SSD "C:" Drives and large "D:" Data drives it does seem a little cavalier to store what could be may gigabytes of data (if multiple games are managed in Vortex) on "C;" with no warning as Vortex is being installed.

 

 

No, Vortex installs the main application to %ProgramFiles% which by default is on C:.

If you have reconfigured to store program files on another drive then Vortex will obey that.

Also, Vortex installs its main application and its configuration in %ProgramFiles% and %APPDATA% respectively and our advice is to keep that, but this doesn't account for "gigabytes" of data. Your mods and downloads, which is the bulk of the space requirement, can be stored anywhere you like. Vortex lets you change that at any time, you don't even have to reinstall for that.

[ghj290]

 

I have nothing installed to my "C:" except my operating system; the default Documents and Libraries have been moved to my "F:" drive along with all "User" folders. All non-game software, Office, AV, Browsers etc. are installed to that same "F:" drive. This is because I have a relativity small SSD (128GB) boot drive that I like to leave as OS only to minimise the amount of space used.

 

All Game are installed to either my platter drive "D:" if loading speed isn't an issue or my M2 drive "E:" if it is.

I have used the custom installer to install Vortex to D:\games\vortex but was a little concerned to see that, even with this custom installation, Vortex still stored it Mods in <appdata>\vortex\etc. and was using 16GB of my "C:" drive for mod storage. I have now moved that folder within Vortex (thanks for giving us the option to do this) to D:\Games\Votexmodlibrary and this seems to work fine.

Considering that a lot of PC's are sold with small SSD "C:" Drives and large "D:" Data drives it does seem a little cavalier to store what could be may gigabytes of data (if multiple games are managed in Vortex) on "C;" with no warning as Vortex is being installed.

 

 

No, Vortex installs the main application to %ProgramFiles% which by default is on C:.

If you have reconfigured to store program files on another drive then Vortex will obey that.

Also, Vortex installs its main application and its configuration in %ProgramFiles% and %APPDATA% respectively and our advice is to keep that, but this doesn't account for "gigabytes" of data. Your mods and downloads, which is the bulk of the space requirement, can be stored anywhere you like. Vortex lets you change that at any time, you don't even have to reinstall for that.

 

Thanks for the quick reply Tannin, yes, I did notice that there was the option to move the downloads folder within Vortex and that worked with no issues, and do appreciate that you've given us that option; I just assumed that as I'd elected to use the custom install version and elected to install Vortex to D:\games\Vortex that, that would result in all Vortex related files, in totality, to be running from that same directory and nothing would be running from any of the folders in my "C:" drive.

It's not a big issue as there isn't much space used on "C:" by Vortex now, but a warning while using the customer installer that "downloads will still be stored on "C:" despite the custom install location might be something to consider for a future update.

[Grestorn]

Funny is that people assume and then complain very loudly about things they just assumed.

 

Nobody even begins questions himself or maybe that he just didn't see or understand a certain thing before they're complaining about it.

 

That's very very common these days, and this forum is ample proof for that.

[ghj290]

Funny is that people assume and then complain very loudly about things they just assumed.

 

Nobody even begins questions himself or maybe that he just didn't see or understand a certain thing before they're complaining about it.

 

That's very very common these days, and this forum is ample proof for that.

Well I wasn't actually "complaining", more submitting observations; when we select a custom install location for a piece of software we, generally, do so because would like that software to be installed to, and to run from, the installation location we chose. That, after all, is why we chose a customer install in the first place. I, (yes I assumed) that Vortex would behave in the same way; it didn't for reasons that Tannin and others have explained to others. I just think that it would be, shall we say "informative" if the custom installer notified the use during the install process that parts of Vortex would still be stored, by default, on the "C:" drive and that these defaults can be changed within Votex's Settings.

Sorry if I came across as "complaining very loudly", I tried my best to be as non-complaining as possible.

Edited October 24, 2018 by ghj290

[Grestorn]

Not true. Practically no modern program puts the data it generates into its own install directory. This behaviour is discouraged for more than 20 years.

 

And sorry if I sounded too harsh. This wasn't reall directed at you so much. Your posting was not offensive, but there are many others here which really bother me a lot. So my posting was probably just placed in the wrong thread, sorry for that.

[ghj290]

Not true. Practically no modern program puts the data it generates into its own install directory. This behaviour is discouraged for more than 20 years.

 

And sorry if I sounded too harsh. This wasn't reall directed at you so much. Your posting was not offensive, but there are many others here which really bother me a lot. So my posting was probably just placed in the wrong thread, sorry for that.

That's okay, I have seen some pretty bad posts on here, that's why I made a point to try not to be "dickish"; I'm used to to thinking in terms of games installs that only put save games and config *.ini files outside their install location. In the case of Vortex if it was just this small amount of data, like with games, it wouldn't be an issue. However, Vortex also set it's Download Folder to be in "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Vortex\downloads", even though I'd set the custom install to go to my "D:" drive.

 

As I have Vortex managing Skyrim, Skyrim SE, Fallout 4, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, The Witcher 2 and 3, X-Rebirth and kerbel Space Program that could, potentially, be a lot of data in the form of mods. (just the mods for Skyrim SE came to 16GB). As my "C:" drive is only 128GB in size, it could be filled rather easily in this way had I not noticed and investigated Vortex's settings and found how to move the "Downloads" folder to another drive.

 

As I said it's not really an issue now I've noticed what was happening and changed the folder path; I just think a warning when using the Custom Installer that this was the case could be something worth adding at some later point. Small SSD's for OS install are not longer that uncommon after all.

[Grestorn]

I've already argued with Tannin that it would be better to place the default for downloads and the mod installation ("mod staging") to the user's documents directory instead of AppData. The downloads and mods are really userdata and not configuration data, like the Vortex internal database.

 

So on that I agree with you. Tannin doesn't though :) It's not that big an issue, though, since the path can (and should) be changed easily enough.

[Tannin42]

Thanks for the quick reply Tannin, yes, I did notice that there was the option to move the downloads folder within Vortex and that worked with no issues, and do appreciate that you've given us that option; I just assumed that as I'd elected to use the custom install version and elected to install Vortex to D:\games\Vortex that, that would result in all Vortex related files, in totality, to be running from that same directory and nothing would be running from any of the folders in my "C:" drive.

 

It's not a big issue as there isn't much space used on "C:" by Vortex now, but a warning while using the customer installer that "downloads will still be stored on "C:" despite the custom install location might be something to consider for a future update.

 

 

Well, the problem is that even with the custom installer I can't know where to store downloads if you install on another drive.

On C: MS has layed out defaults. Sure, you can argue about whether it should be %APPDATA% or %LOCALAPPDATA% or documents, but I can be reasonably save that if I store stuff in %APPDATA%\vortex that I

a) have write access there

b) exclusive use of that directory

Meaning I don't need to worry about other applications interfering.

 

If, however, you're installing Vortex in, say, d:\Vortex, where should I store downloads?

Can't be d:\Vortex\downloads because the d:\Vortex is the application directory and it's supposed to be read-only for security reasons. Also, and this was the main reason for this thread, the updater/uninstaller will replace the entire application directory to ensure it doesn't leave obsolete files from older versions that the new installer doesn't even know about.

I could try to construct a name, like d:\Vortex_downloads - but I can't be sure that directory doesn't already exists, that I'm allowed to write there or that you like it. Maybe you'd prefer "d:\Vortex-downloads" or "d:\vortex downloads" or "d:\vortex_data\downloads" or ...

 

So I'd have to ask you, that's the only reasonable approach. Now I could ask you in the installer but then you'd have two different ways to select the directory, one in the installer, implemented with nsis (installer framework), potentially executed as admin and one inside vortex, implemented in node.js, executed as regular user. Not only could this cause trouble, it's also inconvenient because you have to learn two different UIs for the same thing.

 

And with mods, I can't even do that, because every game may need the mods on a different drive, e.g. you could have skyrim on d: and fallout on e: - and the installer won't even know which games you manage at all.

 

It's just all entirely impractical, the only doable approach is install with defaults - which have to be on C: in a directory that is guaranteed writable - and then, inside the UI, let you change, at the point where Vortex already knows which games you manage, running with the permissions that you're actually going to use for modding.

[ghj290]

Thanks again for the reply, I understand completely that, as you say, on a custom install there is not way that you as the dev would know where to place the downloads folder, except on "C:"; but a warning or information popup during the install procedure stating that would be nice. As stated, it is now common for people to have relativity small SSD boot/OS drives these days, with much bigger "Data" drives.

 

For instance, my gaming PC (and this is by no means an unusual configuration) has a 128GB "C:" drive and a 6TB platter, "data" drive. ( I also have a 500GB M2 "E:" drive for games that benefit from a fast drive, Star Citizen for example but this can be ignored for this example), now with the number of games supported by Votex (this is a good thing) space on small SSD "C:" drive could be filled very quickly by mods if the Vortex downloads folder is located on "C:".

 

As I've mentioned above I have Vortex set to manage Skyrim SE, Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 3, The Witcher 2 & 3, X-Rebirth, Kerbal Space Program and Subnautica. Skyrim SE, alone has a download folder size of 16GB with Fallout 4 being 20GB. I've not imported Fallout New Vegas or Fallout 3 from MO yet but they will add more yet GB's to what would have been my small "C:" drive.

 

As above this isn't an issue as I spotted what was happening and moved the download folders; I would expect people that use Vortex to be above average PC users, but I only spotted this when the Macrium Backup of my OS drive took longer than usual to complete. Otherwise I may not have noticed this until my "C:" drive was near to full (showing "red" in explorer). Just a note that this is the default behaviour either on the custom installer download page or as the installer is running would mitigate some users ending up with a full "C:" drive.

 

Anyway, please this is not a complaint or criticism, but more of an observation of something that could,potentially, cause some users grief; I do really do appreciate all the work you have put into Votex and MO previously.