[macks]

I've slowly been moving things off of my htpc and onto my file server(unraid). It was time to try and move my pc games, mainly just out of curiosity.


I copied my steam folder to my file server and then moved my steamapps folder to a different location on my htpc. Added the library location to steam and surprisingly it works. I tried Skyrim last night and it ran much better than I expected it to. The loading screens were a little slower and there was an occasional stutter but all told not as bad as I expected.


I think I'm going to try some games that are less demanding on storage. I will also be trying to add these games to another computer.


Has anyone else tried this? Crazy enough to try? Comments?


Relevant system info: Gigabit switch, realtek gigabit NICs, only 8GB of ram on the htpc. The games are parity protected right now but this shouldn't have a performance impact.


In this scenario more memory and Intel NICs would most likely help considerably.


UPDATE 4/12/2013 - I tried loading up some games on a different computer with the same account and found the following:


Bastion and Trine will not run. I am alive and sonic generations will. Both of these ran very smoothly actually.

 

[bd2003]

Hmm....I've backed steam games up on a NAS before, but never actually run them directly from a NAS. With gigabit I doubt performance is a major issue compared to a local HDD, but my HTPC has an SSD. Id love it if there was a simply and easy way to shift individual games back and forth.

 

[DaverJ]

I might be missing something, but have you tried Steam Mover?


It seems like you can use NAS for storage, and then use Steam Mover to put any game currently playing on the local HD/SSD.

 

[macks]



Quote:
Originally Posted by DaverJ  /t/1467700/steam-games-installed-to-nas#post_23195231


I might be missing something, but have you tried Steam Mover?


It seems like you can use NAS for storage, and then use Steam Mover to put any game currently playing on the local HD/SSD.

True. This way I can just install the game to the NAS and play it from any computer.


I'm really just doing it b/c I saw there was an option to do it in Steam.

 

[bd2003]

Steam mover says "It requires NTFS formatted drives. It will not work with FAT32."


Anyone actually tried it with a NAS?

 

[DaverJ]



Quote:
Originally Posted by bd2003  /t/1467700/steam-games-installed-to-nas#post_23196319


Steam mover says "It requires NTFS formatted drives. It will not work with FAT32."

Ah, there you go. I figured there had to be a good reason. Shame.

 

[jhoff80]

To be honest, since Steam supports multiple install folders now, I'm surprised they haven't added something to the UI to let you move games between locations yet.


You can do it manually but that's a pain since you have to check which acf file is for which game.

 

[macks]



Quote:
Originally Posted by jhoff80  /t/1467700/steam-games-installed-to-nas#post_23197904


To be honest, since Steam supports multiple install folders now, I'm surprised they haven't added something to the UI to let you move games between locations yet.


You can do it manually but that's a pain since you have to check which acf file is for which game.

They have a backup option but I haven't tried it yet.


Slight update, I'm playing Skyrim again tonight and it's playing fine. My overclock was lost on reset so that's why the game was stuttering a little. User error.

 

[bd2003]



Quote:
Originally Posted by jhoff80  /t/1467700/steam-games-installed-to-nas#post_23197904


To be honest, since Steam supports multiple install folders now, I'm surprised they haven't added something to the UI to let you move games between locations yet.


You can do it manually but that's a pain since you have to check which acf file is for which game.

I guess its because games are rarely so nicely encapsulated, they still like to install stuff in your user or documents folder, which can be different depending on the version of windows. They probably don't want to build it in because it wouldn't work half the time, and would still leave like 20% of the game on your main drive. Like the skyrim save folder, for instance - that's still on your main drive in your docs folder. If they move it, it breaks. If they don't move it, they didnt do what you asked, and if you reformat expecting it to still work....it won't, AND your save is toast.

 

[macks]



Quote:
Originally Posted by bd2003  /t/1467700/steam-games-installed-to-nas#post_23198593


I guess its because games are rarely so nicely encapsulated, they still like to install stuff in your user or documents folder, which can be different depending on the version of windows. They probably don't want to build it in because it wouldn't work half the time, and would still leave like 20% of the game on your main drive. Like the skyrim save folder, for instance - that's still on your main drive in your docs folder. If they move it, it breaks. If they don't move it, they didnt do what you asked, and if you reformat expecting it to still work....it won't, AND your save is toast.

A lot of your steam games are automatically saved to the cloud anyways, including Skyrim.

If you want to launch steam games from xbmc check this out.

http://www.gwenael.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=209

 

[jhoff80]



Quote:
Originally Posted by macks  /t/1467700/steam-games-installed-to-nas#post_23197953


They have a backup option but I haven't tried it yet.

The backup option is something different. It packages the game data in a self-extracting .exe file, which you can then use to restore it at a later date.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bd2003  /t/1467700/steam-games-installed-to-nas#post_23198593


I guess its because games are rarely so nicely encapsulated, they still like to install stuff in your user or documents folder, which can be different depending on the version of windows. They probably don't want to build it in because it wouldn't work half the time, and would still leave like 20% of the game on your main drive. Like the skyrim save folder, for instance - that's still on your main drive in your docs folder. If they move it, it breaks. If they don't move it, they didnt do what you asked, and if you reformat expecting it to still work....it won't, AND your save is toast.

No matter where you install the game to, your save files remain in the same place (hard-locked to the C: drive), so it's doubtful that has anything to do with why.

 

[abhi.ko]

I've slowly been moving things off of my htpc and onto my file server(unraid). It was time to try and move my pc games, mainly just out of curiosity.

I copied my steam folder to my file server and then moved my steamapps folder to a different location on my htpc. Added the library location to steam and surprisingly it works. I tried Skyrim last night and it ran much better than I expected it to. The loading screens were a little slower and there was an occasional stutter but all told not as bad as I expected.

I think I'm going to try some games that are less demanding on storage. I will also be trying to add these games to another computer.

macks - I realize that this thread is over a year old but I am trying to do the same thing now - I too have a similar setup.

I run an unraid tower mainly used as a media server and instead of my HTPC I use my desktop for gaming - but I would like to move my steam games from my desktop HDD to unraid due to space concerns on the desktop HDD. I added the unraid share as a steam location and downloaded and installed a game (Darksiders) on the unraid server and played it from there and it worked without issues, my question is regarding moving my existing games (steamapps folder) to the unraid share.

How did you do that? Did you just copy the steamapps directory and move it over? I would think that the steam installation has to remain on the desktop right and just move the steamapps folder over?

All help appreciated.
Abhi

 

[HeadRusch]

To be honest, since Steam supports multiple install folders now, I'm surprised they haven't added something to the UI to let you move games between locations yet.

You can do it manually but that's a pain since you have to check which acf file is for which game.

I was still doing JUNCTION commands in DOSprompt..........nice, they added this and don't even offer it as a feature in the app? Must be busy working on Half Life 3......

 

[bd2003]

macks - I realize that this thread is over a year old but I am trying to do the same thing now - I too have a similar setup.

I run an unraid tower mainly used as a media server and instead of my HTPC I use my desktop for gaming - but I would like to move my steam games from my desktop HDD to unraid due to space concerns on the desktop HDD. I added the unraid share as a steam location and downloaded and installed a game (Darksiders) on the unraid server and played it from there and it worked without issues, my question is regarding moving my existing games (steamapps folder) to the unraid share.

How did you do that? Did you just copy the steamapps directory and move it over? I would think that the steam installation has to remain on the desktop right and just move the steamapps folder over?

All help appreciated.
Abhi

It's not that simple, you need to copy them over and then create a symbolic link back to their original location. It's kind of a hacky workaround, it'll be much simpler in the long run if you just moved all the folders, then uninstalled them and reinstalled them via steam. Since the data will all be there all it has to do is revalidate them in their new location.

 

[macks]

It's actually not that bad to move games but not great.

I just go to steamapps then common. Grab the folder of the game you want and cut and paste onto your unraid share.

Now you have to go into steam and delete local content. Then install the game in the new location and Steam will discover the files that are there, it takes a couple minutes though.

With some games I have had to install locally and then move them to the NAS(unraid) to get them to work. Steam seems to have problems with updating the registry on games that aren't installed locally and I'm generally too lazy to do it manually.

I like never having to uninstall anything. I also play games on the NAS from different computers(at different times) without problems.


I probably grabbed the entire common folder initially and then went from there.

Steam big picture kept bugging out on me, that is why I was using XBMC to launch games but Steam Big Picture has been working great for a couple months now.

Good luck!

 

[bd2003]

A neat trick you can do if you have some local storage is to set up offline files and enable the transparent cache. That way anything that you pull off of the NAS will stay on the HDD, and loads will be much faster for stuff you play frequently.