I got a new mobo.
I gotta format,but I don't want to lose my steamapps folder. Took me WAY TOO LONG to download all my games. It's way too big for a DVD.
Also,don't go all " lol you are going to lose the folder no way dude you're gonna have to format lolololol. "
Either you be a nice person and give me an idea,or please,just don't post anything at all.
Thank you for your attention.
- Irving
Move them to a different hard drive or if you have to, split them up on different DVDs. It's not that hard.
Got a single hard drive. Splitting 75 gigabytes isn't really cool,y'know.
Any way to make a new formation,put all my games in that formation,then nuke the shit out of C: ?
Yeah. You create a new partition.
Or install windows again, create a new partition. I did that, I have two windows installs on my HDD.
One from my old format ( before win7 )
and the win7 one.
^ Yeah, you can try making a separate partition for your HD to store the games while you format your C drive, after it's done you can merge them back together.
Right. Could anyone of you teach me how to make a partition out of a folder?
( Is that...even possible? I mean,I wanna make a partition out of my steamapps folder. Some sort of...Folder2Partition shit,idk. )
I got partition magic,but it seems that I can only make partitions out of my blank C: Space,which is really...tight.
You need to clear up some space then, you can't go partitioning space that doesn't exist :v:
Here's C:. And here's steamapps.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||///////|||||||||||
I just want to make it look like this:
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||||||||||
C APPS
So,there's no way to split C into two?
[editline]11:40PM[/editline]
Help anyone?
Start with this. We know your games take up 75GB, how big is your hard drive, and how much space is left. Answer and that will get the ball rolling for us.
You can't partition without formatting your computer. (at least, I can't imagine)
When you partition you "break" files by splitting the hard drive. You could very well damage/split your steamapps folder without noticing.
I suggest you find a computer in your network that has enough space left on the hard drive and copy the files there.
[QUOTE=Wokkel;23351390]You can't partition without formatting your computer. (at least, I can't imagine)
When you partition you "break" files by splitting the hard drive. You could very well damage/split your steamapps folder without noticing.
I suggest you find a computer in your network that has enough space left on the hard drive and copy the files there.[/QUOTE]
This is incorrect.
You can use something like gparted to shrink the volume and squeeze another partition in. You will need to defragment your drive thoroughly though, so that all the data is in one contiguous area. You may wish to use a livecd and defragment from that because the windows tool will not be able to move files that are in-use (i.e. the os).
I've done the above before on a work laptop which I wanted to install linux on and couldn't re-image the machine on my own.
Okay, good to know for the future.
I'd still go with copying the files over the network onto a different computer if I was him.
[QUOTE=Wokkel;23351763]Okay, good to know for the future.
I'd still go with copying the files over the network onto a different computer if I was him.[/QUOTE]
I concur, if he has the option of doing that I would do it too, although I was able to squeeze a new partition in for my dual boot, I imagine there exists the possibility of you corrupting the existing volume during the procedure.
OP - do you have any friends nearby that you could take your machine over to and backup your steam files there?
Well it seems the most liable path here would be just to copy them to disks, or an external drive.
You can destroy partitions without formatting, but you can not create them.
To make a new partition, you need UNformatted space. Space that you can use is formatted. Therefore if you don't have any disks or huge external drives hanging around you need to somehow only format half the drive.
I'm not expert in that regard so i'm sorry that i can't help you any further. I'm sure someone here has some ideas on how you might go about doing that.
OP, it's been a long time since I performed the work I mentioned above and this was when the os I was using was xp. I quickly revisited the issue and it appears that if you're running win 7 or vista you can shrink the ntfs volume within windows.
This is written for vista, but should be the same for win 7:
[url]http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial133.html[/url]
I got like,5 gbs left. Yeah.
Also,XP.
Long Short story: I need the steamapps folder to become a partition.
Either that,or you guys are going to tell me how to change a motherboard without losing all my shit.
[QUOTE=liquid_phase;23351705]
You can use something like gparted to shrink the volume and squeeze another partition in.[/QUOTE]
gparted is terribad, I tried using it and i sat there for an hour, and it did NOTHING. Use the free trial of Acronis MigrateEasy
[QUOTE=Acronis] "Partition Management
Resizes transferred partitions to match new hard disk size;" [/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/?source=us_google&ad=ame&c=2666183237&k=acronis%20migrateeasy&gclid=COrR-ZmY66ICFVJH5woday3IdA[/url]
(CLICK DEMO VERSION)
Now ok, if you need to reformat your HDD, and you don't want to redownload all your steam games this is what you do.
****Don't let me get your hopes up, i'm almost fairly positive, you CAN NOT copy your steam games like that.
-Clear up enough space on your HDD so that you can create a partition (I see you say 75GB?), so whatever, remove whatever you can, programs you won't use (because when you reformat, you will need to install them again)
-Once space is clear, use Acronis MigrateEasy (unless i've lied and you can't re-size the partition, so therefore use a different program) to C:\ 75gb less.
-Once you have done this, you can now format the 75gb that IS NOT formatted yet
-Do this by clicking Start, right click My Computer, and click manage
-All the little list of things will be there, you might have to click the + sign to expand the trees, and go to the Storage tree, and click Disk Management (should look like this in XP, and pretty much the same in vista.[url]http://www.doublehammer.com/winxp/images/xp_disk_management.jpg[/url])
-So what you want to do, is make a 75gb NTFS partition, there are other guides on how to do that.. really simple,
-This 75gb partition will appear as whatever letter you set it as when creating the partition
-Try moving your Steam Games there (DO COPY/PASTE, DO NOT CUT/PASTE) Because if the process fails halfway through, you're gonna have messed up files and stuff, This will take 10x longer, but IF it works, it's worth the wait
What to do if you are unable to copy/paste the Steam folder
-Still use that 75gb partition.
-Go into Steam>>Library>>Games
-Right click a game you want to backup (You can do multiple game backups)
-Click Backup Game Files
-And put your backups onto the 75gb partition
[caps]THIS IS THE ONLY OPTION IF YOU CAN'T COPY THE STEAM FOLDER[/caps]
But I would do this rather than screw around with partitions
When you re-format your harddrive, make sure you don't erase the entire thing (is that possible idk).
Because otherwise you wasted all your time :D
[QUOTE=cam64DD;23353953]
Either that,or you guys are going to tell me how to change a motherboard without losing all my shit.[/QUOTE]
You are very demanding, we are people like you too...
Uhhhh I am not sure you can change mobos without losing your stuff, unless it is the same motherboard, or a very similiar model.
I did this 2 months ago, my mobo fried, and so I bought the EXACT, SAME MODEL, but the mobo was a little different, I think because the mobo that I originally had was a special kind for Gateway, ANYWAYS
I swapped everything out, had to put my XP key in, and re-install some drivers, (sound, graphics) and it needed some new BIOS drivers for the graphics card, and voila it worked.
I still believe getting a second hard drive is tons easier, could you not borrow someone's external hdd or maybe you have another pc at home?
Anymore computers in the network?
Setup a shared folder and transfer them across. Might take a bit, depends if you're doing it over Wi-Fi or Ethernet. But it'd save them.
Due to my Steam folder being 270GB I have it installed on a seperate 1TB drive along with my music and videos. Keeping my OS on a seperate 250GB HDD.
[QUOTE=bull3tmagn3t;23354449]gparted is terribad, I tried using it and i sat there for an hour, and it did NOTHING. [B]Use the free trial of Acronis MigrateEasy[/B][/QUOTE]
Sweet, this is good to know. I haven't used gparted in years and I would much rather recommend acronis (something I've used a few times and have been very impressed with) to anyone else in this situation.
OP, bull3tmagn3t's post is basically everything you need to know if you want to go this route.
Your other 2 options as I see it are copy the files to external storage and/or a networked computer OR install the new mobo and suck it and see - I've upgraded from amd to intel (so new mobo and cpu) on vista and it was fine, not sure about xp though...
Okay,New plan.
I got 30 gbs of free space now. I'll just make another partition,install winxp in the new partition,kill the old windows with good old delete,and voila?
Make new partition
Install winxp on that partition
Delete everything else but my steamapps folder in my old partition
Move on with gaming
Would that work?
Gonna use partition magic. Make the new partition before or after C: ?
In that case,would the new partition have to be a logical or a primary one?
NTFS no doubt
Here's a better idea:
1. Make a new partition.
2. Back up your games through Steam itself.
3. Move the backups to the clean partition.
4. Format the partition that has your OS on it
5. Re-install windows and steam.
6. Restore your backups from your partition you put your backups on.
Sure. Should the new partition be logical or primary?
[QUOTE=cam64DD;23366295]Sure. Should the new partition be logical or primary?[/QUOTE]
No idea, I used Easeus Partition Manager, lot simpler.
Free?
Yup, just google it.
[QUOTE=dutchah;23366395]No idea, I used Easeus Partition Manager, [B][U]lot simpler[/B][/U].[/QUOTE]
Have you used any of the other partition programs mentioned???
FFS, he already was gonna use Partition Magic, which I have used, and it is a GREAT program, but like usual, this forum has to put their own programs that they have used into the mix.
This forum has given me like 20 different partition programs, all of which, DID NOT WORK, ESPECIALLY gparted, and I found Partition Magic, and Acronis MigrateEasy (by myself) and those ones work.
[QUOTE=bull3tmagn3t;23366914]
FFS, he already was gonna use Partition Magic, which I have used, and it is a GREAT program, but like usual, this forum has to put their own programs that they have used into the mix.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah, he should take advice from you and only you because you are the almighty authority on this shit :downs:
God fucking forbid we all try and help the OP. :downs:
Donesn't windows 7 put everything into windows.old for you?
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