Vortex won't accept another storage drive for staging folder

[LaraCrott]

Hi,

 

I noticed the default Vortex deployment method doubles the ammount of mods you install.

 

Say you got 20gb of mods and when you put it into Data folder of SkyrimSE that makes about 20GB + 13GB = 33 GB SkyrimSE folder in total.

 

But when you install them using Vortex it becomes: 20GB Deployment Staging Folder + 20 GB installed mods inside the Data folder of SkyrimSE + 13GB SkyrimSE itself = 53 GB SkyrimSE folder at the end.

 

So Vortex is freaking space hungry.

I have noticed this recently and would like to move my staging folder to another HDD.I've tried it and it moved the folder but then it gives me Deployment Error.Saying no method available for that current setup.

 

 

Which is simply Vortex is installed in C: while the staging folder is in D:.......

 

LIFE IS SO HARD! :sad:

[HadToRegister]

The mods are Hardlinked or Symlinked.

Meaning the mods are PHYSICALLY in the MOD folder you specified int he SETTINGS tab.
The Linked files look like they're taking up twice the space in the Data folder, but only exist as LINKS there.

Your STAGING folder should be on the same drive as your GAMES. in order to be able to Symlink or Hardlink

[rmm200]

duplicate

[rmm200]

duplicate

[rmm200]

No data gets written to your game folder. You only have one copy of your mod, and a link to it goes into the game folder.

All bets are off if you "copy" your game folder somewhere else. That might actually give you a second copy if it does a deep copy.

Because of the way hard links work (Windows restriction), your mods have to be on the same disk partition as your game folder (documented).

[LaraCrott]

Oh s#*!, so I intend to make backups of my game...Like to keep it stable and all..So far I've been doing it using Vortex...According to what you say the mods won't work within those copies? :/

[rmm200]

Use Vortex to purge mods, then do your game directory backups anywhere. After, backup, Deploy again. It is quick.

 

 

This might help you:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/fileio/hard-links-and-junctions

[Tannin42]

To create a proper backup your mods you should be backing up the %APPDATA%\vortex folder and vortex staging folder (if you changed it to not be in appdata) so you can restore Vortex. Vortex can then apply your mods to the game no matter if you reinstalled it, it should also be able to correctly apply on a different system.

So if you installed all your mods through vortex, you don't have to back up the game directory itself because you can recover that from steam (or your install disc or whatever).

 

Many cheap backup solutions (and manually copying files) will create real copies of the files when you copy from a hard link though.

 

So lets say you have

d:\vortex_staging\mods\mymod\mymod.esp

 

it gets deployed by vortex to

d:\mygame\data\mymod.esp

 

Those will appear as two files for all intents and purposes, but they don't take up space twice, you only have one mymod.esp on disk but two "names" for it.

 

If you now make a copy of either files (doesn't matter which one) to

d:\backup\mymod.esp

that will be a proper copy so now you have mymod.esp show up three times in explorer but it's only taking space for two of them.

[rmm200]

Tannin, when you copy a directory with a hard link in it - using just regular file manager copy - what actually gets copied? The hard link, or the file the hard link points to?

Windows documentation is awfully sparce on this point.

Point in question: I need to clone a game disk. Can I use copy or do I need to use a byte-by-byte clone utility? I suspect the latter...