Can you change the Steam download location?

Question

I do not mean the library folder, but the place where the downloaded files are stored to and then installed from.

Windows Resource Monitor shows that they're downloaded onto the same drive the library resides on. The whole installation (especially of patches) could probably be sped up, if you could tell it to download the files to a different, physical drive, so that the drive wouldn't have to read and write to the same place.

So can you change the download location, and if so, how? It works with GOG, so it would be a bummer if you couldn't do it with Steam.

Yorik · Accepted Answer

So you are asking if you can move the steam/steamapps/downloading folder to a different drive, for speed reasons.

If there is no built-in facility for this in Steam, you can use mklink.

However, this is probably not a good idea, since steam downloads updates to this folder and then moves the files (unless the update is some for of delta patcher).

Moving files on a single volume is usually a simple edit of the file system which can be achieved nearly instantly, but moving from one drive or volume to another involves actually copying the data.

Facundo Colombier · Answer

After doing some research seems that Steam looks for free space on the drive that the game is installed, if you have enough free space then the download location will be in the same disk that the game is, if not then will try another disk. Hope this helps.

Answered by Facundo Colombier on August 1, 2020

Vemonus · Answer

You can create a new steam library folder to accomplish what you want. Try the steps here:

Go to Steam -> Setting -> Downloads -> STEAM LIBRARY FOLDERS
Add Library Folder. On the drop down menu, select which drive you want. Select which subfolder you want to put the new SteamLibrary in. For me its E:/Games/SteamLibrary.
Next time you download a game, you have the option of saving it in the new spot.

Can you change the Steam download location?

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