Folder redirection when you don't have a location tab (win 10)?

My main Steam directory is on a mechanical hard drive, and some of my games are on an SSD that need the fast access times. But Steam still likes to save some game files to the Steam default drive even when you’ve installed a game to a different drive. Transport Fever and Battletech do this. I’d like to do a folder redirection so the savegame files are actually on my SSD instead of the old place, but Windows 10 by default only lets you do folder redirection with built in folders like My Documents.

Anyone know how I can do this for any folder I’d like?

Use junctions by command line using mklink /J

or by GUI

or using GameSave Manager v3’s Steam Mover

So if I wanted to junction link from my slow drive D:\Steam\xxxxx\7845 over to my SSD which is my J drive, would it be:

mklink /J D:\Steam\xxxxx\7845 J:\Battletech

or do I have that backwards?

  1. first move the older folder 7845 to a new location (i recommend a holding folder to indicate it’s junction source) like J:\Junctions
    Then go to command prompt and navigate to the parent folder of where you moved the child folder from (D:\Steam\xxxx\7845") and go:
    MKLINK /J “Battletech” J:\Junctions\Battletech

and it will create an alias called Battletech that points to where it lives on J:

Or use the ShellExView extension where you right-click drag, choose create junction point and you are done! Well after you move the folder first. The right-click drag creates the alias.

Ahhh so I did do it backwards. Thanks!

Did you get it working, and test it successfully?

The GUIs I’ve used that run the command for you help you with the “copy it over first” step and just generally reduce confusion about what your command line is going to do. I recommend them over just winging it.

I did, thank you :)
I’m happy to do it the commandline route as there may be other things down the road I’d like to do that require me to remember how to do stuff like that better.

I like command lines when it increases your options, and don’t shy away from them myself. If you were ever on a linux system I’d recommend you review ln and compare options so that you could gain that info for your toolbox as well. But with this one particular task, I find that memorizing the command doesn’t really help because I use it so rarely that I’ll just get it wrong every time I need it again and a GUI takes away that bit of new learning curve that comes every time. And also, there’s really only one particular use case for sym links in windows that most users ever need so the extra options on the command line aren’t really useful.

Anyways, that’s just my two cents that I should have added to my post above; I’m not trying to convince you otherwise, it’s a good thing to know you can do. I personally move a lot of shit that programs decide just “has” to go on C: regardless of where it’s installed using symlinks every time my small system SSD gets full of garbage. Save games are the worst offender.

It’s not really rocket science via the command-line either. Just as long as @jpinard isn’t on some Ambien-addled cocktail at the time.