If you’ve just bought a fancy new solid state drive, you might want to move a select few games across for improved performance and loading times. You may also just be running out of space on your main drive and feel like relocating a game to a secondary hard drive. Unfortunately the guys at Valve Software have not been kind enough to let you move or install your games in different locations. Thankfully, there is a workaround for this dilemma. Basically we can move a game folder and then create a virtual link to it from its original location. That way we essentially “fool” Steam into thinking it hasn’t moved. Clever eh?
The first thing we need to do is find out the current location of your Steam games. By default, Steam keeps all game files in its initial installation folder. If you’re running a 64-bit version of Windows like myself, that would most likely be “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common“. If you’re running a 32-bit version of Windows, it would likely be found in “C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common“.
If you chose to install to a different folder, you’ll need to locate it. Right-click on your Steam icon and click properties, take note of the Target location. If you’re in Windows 7 and Steam is running, you might need to right click the icon in the task-bar, then right-click the small steam icon as per the image below.
In my case, I want to make some room for Skyrim (!!!) on my SSD. So I’m moving Supreme Commander 2 to my RAID array. Please follow the steps below, substituting where appropriate:
1. Browse to the appropriate folder – in my case that’s “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common”.
2. Right click on the game folder and click Cut as per the image below (yes it’s basic stuff, but many people nowadays don’t have a clue about file management).
3. Browse to the hard drive and location that you wish to relocate the folder to. In my case that’s D:\Games. Right click the white space and click Paste. Be patient while the folder moves.
4. Once that’s complete, we need to run a command prompt. Click the Windows button and type in cmd and hit Enter.
5. We need to browse to the original Steam installation folder. So in my case I would type:
cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common |
6. We then need to create a virtual link to the new location. Very easy to do. Remember that this needs to have exactly the same name as the folder we just moved. In my case, the name of the folder was “supreme commander 2″, so the command is:
mklink /j "supreme commander 2" "d:\games\supreme commander 2" |
Hit Enter. If this worked correctly you should see a message that says something like:
"Junction created for supreme commander 2 <<===>> d:\games\supreme commander 2" |
Just to recap – the mklink command is used in the following format:
mklink /j "the location where the game used to be" "the location where the game is now" |
If you have any trouble, please post below and I will gladly help.
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Thanks for the tip!
I hate steam for things like this but you helped me a lot! My SSD was always full of stuff :)
or you can just use a program like application mover
well what i have is windows 7 64 and my Stream saves my skyrim games saves to my Documents in game saves folder and as far as i can find on my pc that is the only place i can find my saves for that game or is there some were i’m miseing for everything i see online they are saying the same thing or going t othe same place you are by going into steam app. and i don’t see any saves in there can you help me i’m just looking to take the saves for the game to be moved t omy HHD and before i put my new SSD’s in the saves fron skyrim were very very large i mean 5GB WoW .
the only thing i see in the steamapps folder is skyrim content.ncf ,english and exe.ncf . in the common folder then skyrin folder there is very thing but saves in any of the folders that I can see.
But if i goto start and then to Documents library and go into my games there a folder cald skyrim and in there is the only place i can see the skyrim game saves .
? so if this is the only place that i see my saves for this game is there something i can do tochange the location of my saves to my HHD like you say above but from that place or am i wrong help. LRK322
Hi lrk322, sorry I’m finding it a little hard to follow what you’ve written above. If I understand correctly, you want to relocate your savegames folder for Skyrim. You can do this by using the mklink command after copying the files to a new location, as detailed in the instructions above. That should work fine!
why dont my steammapp folder have a common folder
Hmm… have you tried doing a search on your drive for a folder named common? That’s where I would start.
if it’s not working and i want to undo it. what should i do? thanks
at first i’ve done all the step that you’ve told and it’s finished without any problem but then when i tried to start my dota 2 again, it tooks so long to load and only black screen appear :( what should i do? Can i Undo it back to the steamapps/common? btw im using the 32
H gray, sorry to hear you’re having trouble. You can undo it, yes. First browse to your steamapps/common folder in a command prompt. Then type linkd /d (ignore those arrow brackets). That will remove the junction. Then you can just move the folder back from its new location through explorer. All should work once more. Let me know if you still have trouble.
Hmm, Disqus did something weird there. You need to type:
linkd /d dola2
But you must change dola2 to match whatever the name of the junction folder you created is.
ok i did as it said and all was well then i try to launch the game from with in steam .no good .so i tried to launch it from folder again no good same error on both “this game is currently unavailable please try again at another time
so im wondering is this still valiad for something that has a workshop with mods and stuff
Should work fine, I’m wondering if you didn’t move the game correctly. When you browse to your steamapps folder in explorer do you see the game there?
Whenever I try to create the link in command prompt, I’m hit the “Local volumes are required to complete the operation” problem. What’s causing this and what can be done to fix this? Thanks.
Nevermind, it was a user error. Upon re-reading the message, I realized it was a user error… (Me typing in the incorrect drive letter)… Thanks for the tutorial!
Hi when I put in the address for my common folder it says that it’s not recognized as an internal or external command. Can someone please help me.
Hi Justin, can you paste a screenshot of your command prompt?
I’m running out of space on my SDD too! Thanks for sharing :D
If I move my game(s) to an external hard drive, won’t that greatly slow down my gaming speed? Or will it already be sort of “loaded” into my C drive?
Nope. It shouldn’t reduce the speed a great deal.
Hey, quick question, if I make a junction a “common” folder to another will it sort of instantly link all of my games, if I move them all?