Move select Steam apps to SSD (Win7)

Just upgraded to a 128GB SSD and am extremely happy with it. It’s blazing fast compared to my RAID 0 (2 x WD Black 500GB). However, 128GB isn’t nearly enough space to install all my applications. My Steam folder alone weighs in at 153GB.

Unfortunately, Steam doesn’t allow you to pick and choose the locations where individual games are stored. Thus, I was forced to install Steam on my RAID.. negating any load time benefits I might have gotten from the SSD. Not willing to take that lying down, I did some research and found that you can create Unix style symlinks in the MS file system with a built-in called mklink.

Here is how I moved The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to the SSD.

On my machine the SSD holds Windows 7 Professional x64 in C:\
The two disk RAID 0 is E:\

I installed steam onto the RAID in this folder: E:\Program Files\Steam

I moved the following folder E:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\skyrim to C:\Steam\skyrim then I opened a command line as Administrator and typed:

e:
cd “Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common”
mklink /j skyrim C:\Steam\skyrim

That created a “directory junction” in the steamapps folder that Steam reads as if the files were all together in the filesystem.

Hope this helps new SSD owners frustrated with Steams occasionally poor design decisions.

Link to my blog

You can also use Steam Mover, or one of the junction creating shell extensions like Link Shell Extension for non-Steam programs. Helps automate the process a little.