Steam Mover

Posted on by



Have you run out of space on your C: drive?

Or do you have a super-fast SSD that is too small to hold all your steam games at the same time?

Then try Steam Mover.

  • Navigate to your Steam client 'Settings' menu. Select 'Steam Library Folders' from the 'Downloads' tab. From here, you can view your default installation path, as well as creating a new path by selecting 'Add Library Folder'. Once you have created the new path, all future installations can be installed there.
  • Download Steam Mover- Before Valve's client could handle it, this was the go-to utility for moving Steam games to a new drive. It offers an easy interface to relocate your games and create a link.

Following on from a very interesting post on the Steam forums I've created a little app to make moving the files and creating the junction points much much easier!

The following instructions are a simple way to move your Steam installation along with your games: Exit the Steam client application. Browse to the Steam installation folder for the Steam installation you would like to move (C:Program FilesSteam by default). Delete all of the files and folders except the SteamApps & Userdata folders and Steam.exe.

Example Use

Here I have my steam folder in the default location, and the application should find that for you. If not, select the SteamSteamAppsCommon folder yourself, and a secondary hard disk D:, where I have created a folder.

Note that Steam Mover can be used to move any folder around (by changing the Source Path), but for Steam the maximum benefit is in moving individual games from the Common folder.

I simply select a few games I don't play very often, and click the 'Right Arrow' button. This fires off a few command line windows - please let them run to completion.

Steam

It is using the built-in Windows commands: xcopy, rd, and mklink. If you want to see the exact commands it is running, tick the 'I want to run the commands myself' box.

Once finished, you will see that I have moved Left 4 Dead and World of Goo to my D: drive, but because of the Junction Points created on the C: drive the games continue to work in Steam.

If you want to move games back to your C: drive, simply click on the left arrow button.

Pro's

  • You can store all your steam games on multiple drives, and they all carry on working! You no longer have to do the install/uninstall shuffle to get enough disk space on drive C: for that latest game.
  • You can benefit from that fast, but small, SSD drive by only storing the games you regularly play on the SSD, and moving the older games onto a slower larger hard disk. And all games remain playable in steam.
  • If you want to see what it's doing and run the commands from the command line yourself, tick the 'I want to run the commands myself' box. Note that SteamMover runs commands one at a time, and stops if it gets an error.
  • I actually now install steam and all games on my large D: HDD, and use Steam Mover to just move my favourite games to the C: SSD for a speed boost when playing them.

Con's

  • No warranty. Whatsoever.
  • Things may go wrong. I accept no liability of lost files, yadda, yadda. Its moving a lot of files around, without much checking on permissions, so it may not be perfect. It does work fine for me though. If it does break you may have to copy/move files around yourself, restore from a backup, or re-download your steam games. Please leave feedback below if you get an error, and I shall endevour to fix it in the next release.
  • Requires Microsoft Windows Vista or above (Windows 7, 8, 8.1 are all reported to work fine). It will NOT work on Windows XP.
  • It requires NTFS formatted drives. It will not work with FAT32.
  • Junction Points can only relocate complete folders, not individual files. So unfortunately it will not help with the massive .gcf files in the steamapps folder itself (mostly Valve games such as Counter-Strike and the Half-Life series). To those that have asked, I have tried using mklink to create hardlinks, but they do not work to link to another drive - they only provide a shortcut to a file on the same drive.
Steam

Download

SteamMover v0.1 1168k

Please ensure you download from the above link - various 'cracked' or 'official' versions are hosted on other sites, which is hilarious seeing as its freeware.

Version History

v0.1 - 2nd April 2010

The initial release. So far, it's been so good that it hasn't needed updating. :-)

Installation

Steam Mover Software

Its a Delphi Application, and no installer is required. Just unzip to wherever you want and run SteamMover.exe. If you get permission errors when moving folders you may need to right-click and 'Run as Administrator'.

Uninstall

Itunes6464 msi missing. Simply delete the SteamMover.exe, and if you really want you can remove the Registry keys from HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareSteamMover.

Notable Mentions

Steam Mover
  • Hundreds of thousands of downloads, over 1000 feedback comments from users
  • On the sidebar of /r/steam/

Leave feedback

Lightweight and portable tool for changing the location of Steam apps files when the HDD is running out of free space, in order to create junction points easier

Steam Mover is a small-sized and portable application that enables users to move Steam files to other locations, in case your hard drive has started to run out of space. It is very simple to work with, thanks to its intuitive interface.

Since there is no setup pack involved, you can drop the EXE file in any location on the hard disk and click it to run.

It is also possible to save Steam Mover to a USB flash disk or similar storage unit, in order to run it on any machine with minimum effort.

An important aspect to take into account is that the Windows registry does not get new entries, and leftover files are not kept on the hard disk after removing the utility.

The tool is packed in a regular window with a simple structure, where you can point out the Steam apps common folder using the tree view, along with the new location. You can ask the tool to perform the task automatically or modify command lines.

Steam Mover is very light on the system resources, using a very low amount of CPU and RAM. It has a good response time to commands and carries out a task in no time. We have not come across any issues throughout our evaluation since the program did not hang, crash or show error messages. All in all, Steam Mover delivers a simple solution to relocating Steam apps files.

Filed under

Steam Mover was reviewed by Elena Opris
3.5/5
LIMITATIONS IN THE UNREGISTERED VERSION
  • Requires Microsoft Windows Vista or above (Windows 7, 8, 8.1 are all reported to work fine). It will NOT work on Windows XP.
  • It requires NTFS formatted drives. It will not work with FAT32.
  • Junction Points can only relocate complete folders, not individual files. So unfortunately it will not help with the massive .gcf files in the steamapps folder itself (mostly Valve games such as Counter-Strike and the Half-Life series). To those that have asked, I have tried using mklink to create hardlinks, but they do not work to link to another drive - they only provide a shortcut to a file on the same drive.
This enables Disqus, Inc. to process some of your data. Disqus privacy policy

Steam Mover 0.1

add to watchlistsend us an update

Steam Mover Alternative

runs on:
Windows 10 32/64 bit
Windows 8 32/64 bit
Windows 7 32/64 bit
Windows Vista 32/64 bit
file size:
1.1 MB
filename:
SteamMover_v0_1.zip
main category:
Gaming Related
developer:
visit homepage

top alternatives FREE

How To Move Steam To Another Drive

top alternatives PAID