NMM Behaviour - Swapping Main Skyrim Folder

[Yogre8]

Hello. I would like to have, through some means or another, two installs of Skyrim on my computer. I've looked into it a little, and my original ideal solution, to put the second install onto my HDD, is not viable (I mention this because this is my impression; please let me know if this is not the case, and if so how I would be able to achieve this, as this would by far be the ideal solution).

 

So now, I turn to #2: keep copies of the entire Skyrim install folder (steamapps\common\skyrim something-or-other) and play with the folder names. I see no reason why this wouldn't work for two vanilla copies of Skyrim (although why you would want to do this for vanilla is beyond me). A potential issue I see arising is with modded Skyrim. I'm not sure how NMM tracks the installed mods. Say copy 1 of the main folder has only mods A, B installed. In copy 2 I have only mods B, C. Say the currently active main folder is copy 1 (ie. copy 1's folder name is currently "skyrim" while copy 2 is "copy 2"), and say NMM currently has properly detected mods A, B as being installed. Now I rename the two folders to have copy 2 be named "skyrim" and copy 1 "copy 1". Will NMM be able to follow this and correctly detect mods B, C as being installed?

[wfandrews]

What you are talking about is "profiles" I believe. Find yourself a guide to NMM which will explain how to set up profiles in NMM. Not very difficult to do from what I understand. You can also do the same in MO.

[Yogre8]

I'm wary about this as it seems there are issues with swapping around profiles, such as files not being copied properly. This is why I propose a quick renaming of relevant folders, which would nullify that issue.

Though, of course, depending on NMM's method of tracking installs, this method could prove troublesome as well.