Moving Vortex and Skyrim SE

[notho99]

My local drives are two 500 gb M.2 NVMe drives that are getting full (OK, I may have many more mods than games in total size) I bought an ssd 1 tb SATA drive I'll install as my third drive. I was thinking this may be the opportunity to move my Skyrim SE and Fallout 4 out of the stock steam program files (x64) directory and onto the SSD drive, I would also move the vortex (c:\games\vortex\skyrimse) folder to the new drive (E: I guess) since I think it likes to be on the same drive as skyrim se?

 

Steam will let me move my install although I've never tried it, how would I go about moving all the vortex stuff including mods tools and 6 or 8 profiles? Can I just copy c:\games\vortex to e:\games\vortex and point vortex to the new drive?

 

Thanks!

[Rattledagger]

It's important to let Vortex move the "Mod Staging Folder", since if you do this manually it's a good chance all installed mods will be duplicated and you'll lose all the conflict-rules.

 

So basically, you should do something like this, where let's say you first select SSE:

1: On Vortex mods-tab, click "Purge" and afterwards exit Vortex.

2: In Steam, move game to another disk.

3: Run game launcher to setup registry etc.

4: Start Vortex, you'll get a message about game moved.

5: Just to be on the safe side, re-start Vortex.

6: Make sure new location of game is detected in Vortex.

7: Under Vortex - Settings - Mods, type-in a new location of "Mod Staging Folder" to be on the new disk.

8: Let Vortex move all mods for you, this can take some time.

9: Under Vortex - Settings - Mods, make sure you're using "Hardlink Deployment".

10: Under Vortex mods-tab, click "Deploy".

11: If you want to move another game, in Vortex switch to another game and start on step 1 again.

 

For step 1, the main reason to use Purge is to speed-up step 2, since if you don't purge the mods you'll copy all active mod-files twice, first in step 2 and afterwards in step 8. A minor reason is, it's possible some of the files isn't correctly handled afterwards, meaning even if you disable or uninstall mod the files will be left behind.

 

It's possible you can move multiple games at once, but it's safer to take only one game at a time.

 

Note, if you Purge and switch to another game, Vortex will re-deploy game before switching to another game, making the Purge a waste of time.

[BeowulfSchmidt]

Rattledagger's response should be pinned. With the exception of the purge step, this is what I arrived at after much trial and error.

 

I suggest backing up all existing vortex directories (program and data) as step 0 in this list. That saved my ass a couple of times.

[notho99]

Thank you both for your clear and concise direction. I added a bit to fit my install and things worked out great.

In Vortex, purged mods, exit
uninstalled Creation Kit and the Bethesda.launcher
on Steam moved Game, wait, exit ( I did not know this but Steam copies everything in the game folders not just the files it installed)
restart steam, steam wanted game update before starting, updated, start game, set options, exit loader
in Vortex, added new games search path, restarted it jic (lots of deploy messages, fnis, skse etc.)
in Vortex, Vortex found the game, activate game
in Vortex, under settings/mods changed location to new path, wait for move.
in Vortex, under settings/Downloads, changed to new location, wait for move. restart vortex jic.
Manually moved standalone tool folders like SSEEdit, from C:\Games\ to E:\Games\
in Vortex, updated paths for FNIS, SSEEdit and other tools in Vortex Dash
Deployed Mods whoo-hoo, had to do a recheck after deploy on FNIS to clear message.
reinstalled Bethesda.Launcher and Creation Kit stuff.
Adjust the path in the desktop skse loader shortcut to new path
started SSE skse loader and everything seems to be working fine!
Adjust the path in Bodyslide's settings to new data folder.

Thanks again for the help!