Topic: Moving important data from one drive to another in my computer.

[Inkidu]

So my new computer put everything in the small (I assume partition) drive it calls install. Well my games won't fit in that drive and i have to use the bigger one. Can I just move the important Programs folder over and do it like that or what?

I've never actually had to deal with this problem before.

[AmberStarfire]

I don't think that's a simple question and it doesn't leave a lot clear. Is that where the games' download files are? If you don't want to cut/paste them, you could always try copying them to another directory first and installing them from there (and choose to install them on a different drive). Once you're sure it's worked, maybe remove the files from the other drive then. That's likely how I'd go about it.

[Inkidu]

Fair point. Let me try to break down what happened so I can see if I can make it clearer.

My computer has two drives on it:

One is the C drive (pretty standard) and the other is the D drive (again standard)

What is weird is that on every other computer I've had they've put the booting and OS systems on the smaller drive and put everything else on the larger one. This one has put everything on the smaller drive. I've fixed my steam games so that they'll use the bigger drive and I can head off any other things from using the small drive in the future, but when I was installing things it just didn't strike me to check the drives.

[AmberStarfire]

As long as you have a good bit of room left on the C, it shouldn't make much difference. I think on mine things default to install on to the C.

If game directories are likely to get big, using the bigger drive seems like a good idea.

[Inkidu]

As long as you have a good bit of room left on the C, it shouldn't make much difference. I think on mine things default to install on to the C.

If game directories are likely to get big, using the bigger drive seems like a good idea.

It's going to be a bit before I can test it, but I made a copy of my Program(x64) directory into the bigger drive and will just install new stuff there if it's big. There are only about 50 gigs on the C drive out of about 100 so I'm not really eager to put more on it.

[AmberStarfire]

It's going to be a bit before I can test it, but I made a copy of my Program(x64) directory into the bigger drive and will just install new stuff there if it's big. There are only about 50 gigs on the C drive out of about 100 so I'm not really eager to put more on it.

If you've just moved the program files folder over (with installed things in it), then that likely won't work right if the original folder's gone. (They will likely refer back to the folder they were installed into). If you've made a new folder for installing things in the future, then that should work fine.

At least that's my understanding. A lot of files get installed in different places like appdata as well.

[Inkidu]

If you've just moved the program files folder over (with installed things in it), then that likely won't work right if the original folder's gone. (They will likely refer back to the folder they were installed into). If you've made a new folder for installing things in the future, then that should work fine.

At least that's my understanding. A lot of files get installed in different places like appdata as well.

No, basically I made a copy of the directory both directories in both drives are intact. So all the stuff there should refer to the C drive, and the games will be stored on D. I've already set steam up to recognize the new D version as the default.

[AmberStarfire]

No, basically I made a copy of the directory both directories in both drives are intact. So all the stuff there should refer to the C drive, and the games will be stored on D. I've already set steam up to recognize the new D version as the default.

You could just see how it goes.

[Inkidu]

You could just see how it goes.

Yep. That's the plan. Thanks for your help. :3

[AmberStarfire]

Yep. That's the plan. Thanks for your help. :3

Sure. :) I hope it works okay. One thing I'd say be careful about is opening a program from a secondary location (like opening them from the C once you have them running from the D). I don't know if it's possible to overwrite your appdata but if you have 2 copies running and they reference the same spot (and you have game files saved for instance), you might have issues. If you just use the one and it works all the time, then you should be good.