How do I install steam on my second disk?

Question

I have a laptop with a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. I want to install steam and its games on my HDD, since it has more space available. The problem is, I actually CAN install games on my HDD, but when I click on them, though, they won't open up. I think that's so because I am using Steam Play and every Steam software that is necessary to run Windows games on my machine is being automatically installed on my SSD. So, to fix this, I think the proper solution would be installing Steam on my HD, but... how do I do that?

Just for the record: I do not know if this information is relevant, but my SSD is formated as NTFS, because I came from Windows recently and I do not know if it is required (or how) to change it.

Does this answer your question? How can I change where Steam installs games? — user68186, Feb 09 '23 at 15:36
Unfortunately, no. I tried doing as they said, moving my entire steam folder to my HDD and somehow it does not work, but I do not understand why... All the files have been moved along too, such as Proton and SteamWorks. When I try to open the game it just won't. — Someone, Feb 09 '23 at 16:01
You may want to try creating an ext4 partition to for Steam. Linux apps don't like to be installed in a NTFS partition, as Linux file permissions are usually lost when put in a NTFS partition. However, the accepted answer that tells you how to Create a new Steam Library Folder should work even if the folder is in a NTFS partition. — user68186, Feb 09 '23 at 18:01
Also see What's the best practice for setting up Steam on a second hard disk? — user68186, Feb 09 '23 at 18:06

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 09 '23 at 15:31

Install Steam using the default path (which is ~/.steam), move the directory later and put a symlink instead. This way you don't have to customize anything and you also can do that any time after the installation.

Be sure Steam is not running when you move the directory:

cd
mv .steam /somewhere/
ln -s /somewhere/.steam

How do I install steam on my second disk?

1 Answers1