So, I was playing Skyrim and I noticed how slow it loads at the moment. This is mostly due to having to move all of my steam games from my Samsung 830 128GB SSD to a new 2TB WD HDD. I play Skyrim A LOT so it annoys me that the load times have gone down so much. I came across a thread mentioning Steam Mover, an open source piece of software that uses stuff like xcopy and mklink to move individual games to a different drive but still working via steam. Anyone had any luck with this? Or perhaps any other solution?
I used this loads before I upgraded to a 256gb ssd. My kids use it all the time to juggle their collections. Haven't had any issues with it so far.
Isn't the ability to move the you Steam library now built into Steam ? Settings > Downloads > Steam Library Folder Not sure if it only does all games, or if you can choose what ones to move.
I've moved stuff with it, not had a problem. As corky said though, steam has the ability to have libraries on more than one drive. Not sure if that's only on install though or if you can move a game after it's been installed. If you're worried, make a backup on the 2TB before you move it.
Dear lord you're right. I didn't know steam had this feature. Thank guys. I think I still have to watch my SSD's room. Skyrim's folder still takes up 33GB.
As far as I know, although Steam lets you install a game to a different library, it doesn't actually have any option to move games that are already installed from one library to another. As such, I just use Steam Mover and haven't bothered creating a separate library on my SSD.
I used it to move skyrim to my SSD, I also had mods installed, and it worked fine, also still works fine now I've moved it back. I didn't really notice much difference in skyrim with it running on the SSD or HDD. I may not have really played it enough to pick up on the difference though, and with my system being rather low end now, other components are limiting before the hard drive. What you could do is. Make sure steam is closed and not running. Copy the files for the game from the current steam library, to wherever you want them. Then restart steam and the game should be uninstalled. Then reinstall the game and pick the installation location to be where you've put the files. It will then register the files and jobs a good'un. Would be nice if they made moving the games around easier.
Steam Mover = absolute godsend. I have my entire steam library installed to a 2TB mech drive and when I start getting into a game or replaying it, I steam move it to the SSD. Works a treat. No more re-downloading titles to replay them. Just move it to a mech drive and leave it there.
All I did was make a new steam library folder and moved my skyrim folder over to my SSD. Works perfectly without any issues. Although.. Steam now can't seem to determine where it is, even though it works fine. Best thing is; I now have those blisteringly fast load times back.
Is it the loading times when your switching between areas your talking off? Like when you enter/exit a city or house or dungeon? I didn't notice any real difference in the loading times in these sections when the game was on my Samsung 830 as opposed to the 1TB mech drive.
I use it quite a bit, including a heavily-modded Skyrim, and it works flawlessly every time. But I do wonder whether there's much of a real-world benefit. My OS is on a 128 GB SSD and my games are on a Velociraptor HDD, which is reasonably fast to start with.
