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as above. On the top of my head, I'm thinking of either mounting the second hard disk directly to ~/.steam so that game files are written to the second hard disk, or mounting it to /media/games and then creating ~/.steam as a symlink to /media/games.

Which is better?

I can't figure out the pros and cons of either approach, so would appreciate some guidance. Thanks!

Marcus Pak
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    It depends. Either way is fine in my opinion if you want to dedicate the whole partition to stream. If you want to store 10 different kinds of data in the second drive, it may be better to symlink to 10 folders in a single partition rather than create 10 partitions. This is because if one of 10 partitions fill up you will need to resize them. – user68186 Aug 24 '19 at 12:31
  • @user68186, thanks for sharing. After sleeping on it, I guess the symlink approach is also better from a permissions perspective as mounting it to ~/.steam restricts the drive only to me in the case of a multi-user environment in the future. As you mentioned, I can then also create more symlinks to the drive at /media/games later on if and when more gaming service platforms become available on Ubuntu. – Marcus Pak Aug 25 '19 at 06:14
  • I have converted the comments into a single answer. Sorry for the delay. – user68186 Aug 26 '19 at 15:41

3 Answers3

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Steam supports external library folders that allow you to setup game install folders on multiple drives, and then when you install a game you can choose which Steam Library Folder to install it to. With this functionality you don't need to use any magic to accomplish what you want.

l3l_aze
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It Depends

Either way is fine in my opinion.

Mounting the second drive at ~/.steam

If you want to dedicate the whole drive (or one whole partition) to stream, this is the way to go. This is the best approach under the following conditions:

  • You plan to use the whole drive (or one whole partition) just for steam games and nothing else.
  • You are the only user of the computer, or other users do not need access the second drive or partition.

Creating ~/.steam as a symlink to /media/games

Symlinks need not be to a partition. You can symlink to a folder within a partition. This is a more flexible approach. This is the best approach under many scenarios. Here are some examples:

  • If you plan to use the second drive to store 10 different kinds of data it may be better to symlink to 10 folders in a single partition rather than create 10 partitions. This is because if one of 10 partitions fill up you will need to resize them.
  • If you have more than one users of this computer, it may be efficient for all users to use the second drive for their different data storage needs.

A 3rd. Choice: Change Steam settings

Another alternate is to change the default installation path of steam games (based on the answer by l3l_aze). See Steam help page for details.

Hope this helps

user68186
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I have a 1TB SSD drive dedicated to steam games. I do the following:

  • Mount the drive at /home/$USER/Games using /etc/fstab
  • Symlink ~/.steam to /home/$USER/Games

This works well if you are only wanting to use it with Steam otherwise its probably not the best setup.

If I were to want to install non steam games I would probably make a /home/$USER/Games/Steam dir and symlink ~/.steam to that. Then you could add /home/$USER/Games/GOG and /home/$USER/Games/src etc. as required.

htaccess
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  • ~/ is the shortcut for /home/$USER, so you effectively created a symlink ~/.steam that points to ~/Games which both shares the same parent directory. What good does that do? – Marcus Pak Aug 26 '19 at 11:10
  • Its just convenience and visibility as ~/Games is not hidden ~/.steam is. This saves me having to remember where steam games are located (~/.steam vs ~/.local/share/Steam). Plus if I ever start using non steam games it will be trivial to switch to a structure like that described in the last sentence. – htaccess Aug 26 '19 at 11:56