Steam – force Steam to install games on a drive that isn’t C when in Big Picture mode

steam

I'm setting up an HTPC/Steam machine. It has a 60GB SSD drive for C (wow, small right?). There are several other drives, totalling about 2TB. I'm using Steam in big picture mode. When I install games via big picture I am not given a choice of install location, it looks like all the games are going in C.

Is there a way to force games to be installed on the F drive, for instance? I can see that I can set up a SteamLibrary folder on F (and I have) but I get no option to install on F when I install via Big Picture. What's the best way to solve this situation? I will run out of space on my C drive very quickly.

The reason this question is different from the other one: the other question is about installing games via Steam in standard mode. This question is about installing games in Big Picture mode — they are very different experiences.

Windows 7.

Best Answer

Yes and no. While Steam doesn't support this directly that I know of (though I rarely use Big Picture mode), you can use a symbolic link to make Windows "lie" to Steam. This will require a keyboard and/or mouse for the initial setup, but shouldn't require them after that.

Assuming your SSD's Steam install is at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam, and you want your games to be stored at F:\SteamApps:

  1. Make sure there's not already a folder at F:\SteamApps (or choose a different path).
  2. Move the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps to F:\SteamApps. At this point, no SteamApps folder should exist in your SSD's Steam folder.
  3. Open a command prompt and run mklink /J "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps" "F:\SteamApps"

Afterwards, if you look in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam, you should see a shortcut leading to your HDD's SteamApps folder. When Steam queries for this folder, Windows will seamlessly send it through the symbolic link.

You can be more specific with your symlink, and only move certain games over, or everything under SteamApps\common, etc., but for the purposes of Big Picture mode, this should be your one-time-only setup step.

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