[Shadow / Feydikan]

Ok, as most of you know (or are soon to know) Both Steam and Origin will only let you play files that are saved in in the same Directory as the main file it self. If you try to move your steam or Origin file after it has been created It will no longer work or allow you run games. NOW.... This can be annoying as hell, and even more so if you have limited space on your drives.


With Steam there is generally 2 things you can do: the trick I have learned and am about to tell you, OR just re-install Steam (completly) on the desired drive and redownload all of the games again.

With Origin....well, no matter what you do, try or attempt to do: it will ALWAYS want to download and save the games on your main (windows) drive. For an SSD user like my self, this is a real bitch. I have a 64g SSD Set up for boot and thats about it.... So I use my 500g Drive to basically act as a proxy drive for games, medie and stuff that only takes up space.

SO.... tonight when I tried to download and install BF3.... I had to do some trouble shooting. for one...> EVEN though I had Origin installed on my D drive, IT was still trying to download the game on my C Drive.....


THIS make a man angry.


So.... i asked the Google God for help and this is what I found. (and BTW it works). SO if any one else is having this problem, or just wants to move there Steam folder to a larger directory THIS is how it can be done with our having to re-download and kill your band width allocation for the month (...looks at torn....). .NOW.... for the....cough...slower memebers.... YOU do have to change the directory names when you use command prompt. So if your not really comfortable with doing that talk to one of the 'adults" here (torn, bone or My self) First



It's a little bit of a workaround, not a fix, but you could trick Origin in to thinking you've not changed anything, while putting the data wherever you want by making using of a directory junction point.

Please note that I don't have Origin and haven't tested this with Origin, but it's a trick I use all the time - Windows User Profile, Steam, Music, and so on...

Also note that my instructions here require Windows 7 or Windows Vista. You can do this on Win XP, but I cannot remember what the command is...
1.
Close Origin and all games.

2.
Copy the current folder to the desired location. You must ensure there is no longer a folder with the old name on the system as we're going to place something of that name in a moment.
For sake of safety I recommend you copy the data to the final location (not move) and then simply rename the old location, deleting it only after you know everything is working.

3.
Run a copy of the command prompt as an administrator: find command prompt on the start menu, right-click, and choose "run as administrator"

4.
Run the following command (with the relevant old and new locations, in that order):
mklink /D "C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\" "D:\Games\Origin\Games"


This will create a directory junction point (essentially a symbolic link) in the old location that will silently redirect all requests to use that location (and any sub-locations) to the new location you have specified, it does this without the knowledge of most programs - so they will continue to work unaffected.



As I said before I have tested this and IT does work with Origin.

[TornSoul]

Nice find.

I'm wondering if you take a hit to the speed of load times and rendering without using your SSD. I only have a 90GIG SSD, so I choose a few favorites and only install those. If I installed my games to my external drive, don't I gain much larger swap times being that I now have USB 2.0 in the process?

[mckin]

Or... you could do like i do and install steam or origin on an entirely different drive than your OS (like I have done all along to make it easier when I reinstall windows) to begin with and not have that problem. You will still have to install the ap after installing windows so it adds the registry entries but as long as you renamed the folder before installing you can just drag the contents to the newly created one and BAM it's done.

I see where the conflict is with origin, and it is sad that they think they own our computers. I am against any software manufacturer who believes they can dictate where files belong and have the right to phish around in peoples computers contents. This is the main reason I refuse to buy anything that requires the installation of origin.

As for Torn... well SSD is always going to be faster (unless you get super rich and can afford one of the new SCSI drives that completely blow away even the fastest SSD's), which is why i recommend an internal drive for games. A sata III (6gbps) drive is cheaper than an SSD and is considerably faster than an external drive. For the price of an 100Gb SSD you can get a 1Tb or larger sata III. I personally use both an internal drive and an external drive for all my backups (I know I'm anal... I have backups for my backups).

I actually got sick of the slower speed of my external drive and cracked open the external drives case, removed the drive and put it inside my computer case since they are all use a sata connector now.