Moving individual Steam games (like ArmA II) with Steam Mover or other methods?

I've stumbled onto this app:

http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

which seems to be a "symlink for dummies" tool to get Steam games to work on drives other than where Steam is installed. Has anyone used this? Or is there another, better solution out there for moving INDIVIDUAL Steam games onto other drives?

Here is a post on other methods, including Steam Mover:

http://www.overclock.net/ssd/825342-moving-steam-games-onto-your-ssd.html

My only concern, I guess, is when you're adding mods and changing things around, do the links still work? Or do you have to "unlink" them, make changes, then "re-link" them? And what about patches? Does everything still work the same? Especially since Steam auto-updates - do you have to turn auto-update off?

And finally, if I bought a SSD, would it be better to have the OS and Steam on the SSD, then just move the less intensive games off to a mechanical drive? Or just as well (and much easier) to have Steam on the mechanical drive and move ArmA II on to the SSD?

I'm fed up with Steam and so are a lot of other people because if you buy a steam game on disk and decide you don't like it, you can't give it away or sell it because it's registered to your Steam account only,and it won't play on anybody elses computer.

For example I almost bought Shogun 2 in Game Store recently but when I saw the words "requires Steam account to play" on the box, I thought 'no way hozay' and put it back on the shelf.

if people need UI for what they can do with 10s more work in command prompt window then i'm sorry ...

(sorry just usual aversion against unknown apps w/o source)

ofcouse i'm using junctions and symlinks all the time since XP supports them

Is this 10 seconds in addition to the time it takes to research how to set up a proper symlink? Wouldn't that potentially be hours for someone who is not yet savvy with this method and only touches a command prompt once a year at most? Or is it literally so easy that it would take under a minute to set up? I, for one, have never done this before. I don't mean to overestimate what is involved, but from the reading I have done (already about an hour of cursory investigation) I still lack confidence in the procedure and the results.

Here is my concern: will this remain robust enough to handle all changes made to the game folder itself? All mods, add-ons, patches, etc? Everything is absolutely redirected as if the location had never changed in the first place? Or is there a potential here for headaches once the move is made?

Has anyone symlinked ArmA II specifically? Including getting OA and DLC to weave in with ArmA II to form Combined Arms?

EDIT: does the redirection happen in the operating system? Or does it occur at the original, assumed location of the files? That wouldn't make sense, though, so it must be in the OS. Otherwise you would still be slowed down by the mechanical drive if you were linking to a SSD, right? In order to read the redirection on the mechanical drive, it would take time. Is it correct to assume that it never even reaches the mechanical drive in this case? It reads the link in the OS and goes straight for the SSD? Forgive me if all of this is blatantly obvious to most ArmA users. I'm still waiting for my symlink lightbulb to turn on.

If you just want to, say, move your steam games from your OS drive to some other drive for whatever reason, you can do that fairly easily with just copy-paste :P I did this when I installed my new 500gb harddrive, simply following instructions found on the steam help pages. All you need to do is essentially copy-paste your whole steamapps folder, uninstall steam from drive 1, reinstall it on drive 2, and then copy-paste in the steamapps. Check with the steam help pages, but AFAIK it's no more difficult than that :)

Regards,

Wolfrug

I'm fed up with Steam and so are a lot of other people because if you buy a steam game on disk and decide you don't like it, you can't give it away or sell it because it's registered to your Steam account only,and it won't play on anybody elses computer.

For example I almost bought Shogun 2 in Game Store recently but when I saw the words "requires Steam account to play" on the box, I thought 'no way hozay' and put it back on the shelf.

This isn't the "reasons I hate Steam" thread...

This isn't the "reasons I hate Steam" thread...

was going to post the exact same thing.

back on topic, all you do is just move your steam folder to wherever you want it to go. i have my steam folder in a different hdd altogether from the main ssd hdd

Thanks for the input, but as I said in the title of the thread, I need to move individual games, not the entire batch. Moving the entire Steam collection is supported by Steam, but not moving individual games discretely.

I have read about people symlinking specific game folders to other drives. I'm wondering if anyone has done that with Steam ArmA II with OA, and DLC, having it all work through patches, mods, etc., without trouble - including having the combined arms setup. Also wondering how they did it. With command-line symlinking? With a shell? With the Steam Mover app?

Thanks for the input, but as I said in the title of the thread, I need to move individual games, not the entire batch. Moving the entire Steam collection is supported by Steam, but not moving individual games discretely.

I have read about people symlinking specific game folders to other drives. I'm wondering if anyone has done that with Steam ArmA II with OA, and DLC, having it all work through patches, mods, etc., without trouble - including having the combined arms setup. Also wondering how they did it. With command-line symlinking? With a shell? With the Steam Mover app?

Try this symlink tool, easy to use and you can move files individually if you wish. Works with pretty much everything including Steam.

Bugger me if i moved my entire steam folder it would take a year. Ive wanted to move some games to my SSD ie this game obv, but atm my steam folder comes in at a mega 90gb :O

Bugger me if i moved my entire steam folder it would take a year. Ive wanted to move some games to my SSD ie this game obv, but atm my steam folder comes in at a mega 90gb :O

I think mine may be a little higher than that :D

I have clicked on the folder to view but its taking a while to load up :D

---------- Post added at 05:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------

82 games of 133 installed :)

Try this symlink tool, easy to use and you can move files individually if you wish. Works with pretty much everything including Steam.

Thanks. Yes, when I referred to "shell" in my post above, I was actually talking about that exact program. If you're familiar with it and trust it, I'm more inclined to give it a shot. Still, Dwarden suggests that it's just as easy to do it all manually. I don't know if he means for anyone, or just for the well-initiated command prompters. And if it's an opportunity to expand my knowledge a bit, I may give the manual method a whirl.

Bugger me if i moved my entire steam folder it would take a year. Ive wanted to move some games to my SSD ie this game obv, but atm my steam folder comes in at a mega 90gb :O

Maybe you mean 900GB? My Steam folder is currently over 200GB with what I have installed, and will be well over 600GB once I get the new drive installed, move everything over, and can FINALLY install the rest of my Steam games that have been sitting there waiting for more room.

i used it and it's good one ...

tho like i said most of people aren't aware that since Vista and Seven they have the tools as part of OS

which wasn't the case of XP (and you needed to use tool from SysInternals)

ofcourse for non techy people i understand they need something simpler :)

i only said i prefer something known like LSE than something unknown

Makes sense. Thanks, Dwarden. And that's two votes for the shell now. I should check that out in more detail.

btw. i use mklink which is part of OS :)

Are you tempting me to get smarter? ;)