have 16GB left on my SSD
update - yesterday I thought maybe I should pre-prepare more space on the SSD for the imminent arrival of BFBC2 so I went onto the C: (SSD) drive, moved some more stuff over to the E: (hard drive) using mklink, and hey-presto I've now got 31GB free on the SSD. The main pointers are:
FOR INDIVIDUAL LARGE FILES:
(1) create a sensible folder structure on the hard drive to receive the content that you're moving over from the SSD. E.g. I've created a folder E:\games\CSS
that holds anything I've moved over to do with Counter-Strike (steam installed it to the SSD by default so I moved it). Open an explorer window on "Computer" and note how much space you've used on the SSD.
(2) open two Explorer windows, one on the SSD folder (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps), the other on the hard drive (in my case, E:\games\CSS)
(3) open a 'CMD' window and 'cd' to the SSD folder
(4) In the explorer windows, DRAG any large file from the SSD folder to the hard drive, e.g. "counter strike source shared.gcf" which is 1.7GB. You should now see a copy of the file in the hard drive folder.
(5) DELETE the SSD version of the file (eeek! - to be safer, just rename it if you're unsure but you won't save the space until you delete it)
(6) in the CMD window type
Code: Select all
mklink "counter strike source shared.gcf" "E:\games\CSS\counter strike source shared.gcf"
(7) at this point you should have an entry in the SSD folder that looks like a shortcut to the file on the hard drive, both with the original name.
(8) start CSS and check you haven't fuxed up
(9) EMPTY the recycle bin (assuming you've deleted the original copy of the file on your SSD)
(10) check space used on "Computer" for the SSD - it should have gone down by 1.7GB, i.e. the size of the moved file.
TO MOVE WHOLE FOLDERS (this is more usually the requirement):
everything is the same as above except you're dealing with a folder, and the mklink command has an additional "/D" parameter.
E.g. the same 'SteamApps' folder has a sub-folder "youremail@emailserver" which has sub-folders for each steam game, e.g. "half-life 2 lostcoast"
(1) drag the SSD "half-life 2 lostcoast" folder over to your hard drive
(2) delete (or rename if you're chicken) the SSD "half-life 2 lostcoast" folder
(3) in the CMD window 'cd' to the SSD folder and type
Code: Select all
mklink /D "half-life 2 lostcoast" "E:\games\half-life 2\half-life 2 lostcoast"
assuming thats the harddrive foldername you used...
(4) Now in explorer you should be able to start at C:\, click through the folders until you get to the folder youremail@emailserver and keep clicking through the 'half-life 2 lostcoast' link as if its a folder without caring about the drive placement. Which is the whole point of the exercise. Try it.
You need to empty the recycle bin to see the saving in space. Another tip to save space is to reduce the size of the recycle bin (right click it).
EDIT: wow, just saved another 5GB by turning hibernate off:
in an administrator's cmd window type
Now I've got 39.2GB free of 74.4GB (the formatted capacity of my '80GB' SSD).
BFBC2 is reported on the interweb as installing 6GB so I'm overachieving at the mo.
Bambam
![[OFc] Member](./images/ranks/bullet_star_rank6d_4.gif "[OFc] Member")
