The Elders' House of Pain

Public Forum => Pc Help/Tweak Page => Topic started by: Baltika (#9) on June 03, 2009, 01:53:14 PM

Title: solution - moving games to a new HDD/partition
Post by: Baltika (#9) on June 03, 2009, 01:53:14 PM
I know that forum threads in the PC Help section usually start with a question/problem, but with all the threads related to upgrades, new HDDs, etc., someone might find this useful.

If you've got a new secondary HDD and don't know what to do with all the extra space, and want to free up some space on your primary drive - move some installed programs over w/o having to re-install:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=664376&highlight=junction

(not my thread, not my idea, just something I found useful when I upgraded my machine and installed a 1 TB secondary drive)
Title: Re: solution - moving games to a new HDD/partition
Post by: Shmotz on June 03, 2009, 02:16:32 PM
cool thanks for the info!
Title: Re: solution - moving games to a new HDD/partition
Post by: MDK22 on June 04, 2009, 08:30:34 AM
Or you could simply just use the windows free download app called sync toy. Then once you have made up the link you can re sink it any time you want. Also what that thread fails to mention is the fact that some games hide information within different parts of the c partition meanign if you reinstall windows ya you can't use that game without reinstalling to that directory.

What I the dumbass would suggest is just making and maintaining a copy of your games using synctoy. This would be the best way also I have been looking into programs that record the installations of new programs so as to make an easy backup system so that I can restore all the files including the ones hidden in various locations throughout C: .
Title: Re: solution - moving games to a new HDD/partition
Post by: Baltika (#9) on June 04, 2009, 11:02:05 AM
Or you could simply just use the windows free download app called sync toy. Then once you have made up the link you can re sink it any time you want. Also what that thread fails to mention is the fact that some games hide information within different parts of the c partition meanign if you reinstall windows ya you can't use that game without reinstalling to that directory.

What I the dumbass would suggest is just making and maintaining a copy of your games using synctoy. This would be the best way also I have been looking into programs that record the installations of new programs so as to make an easy backup system so that I can restore all the files including the ones hidden in various locations throughout C: .

I haven't played around with SyncToy yet, but it looks like it does something completely different from Junction.

You can use SyncToy to make a second copy of files/folders to a second location and keep them in sync.  That helps when you want to make backup copies of files.

The junction tool that I posted about actually moves the files/folders to a second location.  That allows you to free up HDD space on your primary drive, while still treating those files as if they were on your primary drive.

In my case, one of my machines has a primary drive that's 20GB and a secondary drive that's 1 TB.  Using junction, I can move GB's of games off my primary drive and onto my secondary drive w/o having to re-install the game.

I do appreciate the link to SyncToy too - I haven't seen that before, and will have to suggest that to my wife.