The software makes use of Windows command line tools to create junctions. We have explained the concept in the guide How To Move Large Apps Or Games To Another Drive. Junctions basically make files and folders accessible in another location on the hard drive. Windows and the applications think that the application or game is hosted in the junction directory, while in fact it is stored somewhere else.

steam mover

Steam Mover has been designed with Steam in mind, as the popular gaming platform limits all game installations to one directory.

The portable program will automatically display the contents of the Steamapps folder on startup. Each folder is listed with its name and size. There are also some fields that are blank at the beginning, including the alternative folder and junction point.

It is possible to change the directory to find another large folder on the drive that needs to be moved. Once the right directory has been located it is time to set the alternative folder.

The alternative folder is the new folder on another drive that will be the new storage location of the selected games or applications.

All that needs to be done at this point is to select the game or app folders that need to be moved to the new drive and to click on the right arrow icon in the footer of the application.

Steam Mover opens some command line windows that will copy the folder and its contents to the new destination, and create a junction point that links to the original folder.

The program window is refreshed in the end to reflect the changes. The junction point is now showing the new directory of the game or app, and the arrow icon indicates that the junction has been created.

It is possible to undo the changes by selecting the folder again in the interface and activating the other arrow button.

move steam

The idea behind the application came from the exact usage scenario that I’m experiencing myself. The developer had a very fast SSD as the primary drive and ran into troubles storing all the games on it. The natural decision was to move older games that are not played regularly to another drive to make up space on the main drive.

Steam Mover has a few limitations. The program only works on NTFS drives, and is only compatible with Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

Steam Mover is the perfect application to move large folders effortlessly to another drive. The program is available for download at the developer website. (via Lifehacker)

Junction was created by Mark Russinovich and is freely available on the Microsoft homepage. The software has a size of only 41K and can only be used from the command line. I’m using several NTFS junctions to be able to access my most important directories from several of my hard drives.

Let us take a look at the example from above and create a NTFS junction from c:\mp3 to d:\mp3. To create the junction you open the command line and write the following code: junction c:\mp3 d\:mp3. If the folder c:\mp3 is not existing it will be created by the command line tool.

You do not have to name them the same way. You could as easily create another junction that links from f:\music to d:\mp3 as well.

This is in my opinion a very nice way of being able to access folders from different hard drives easily. To delete a junction you use the code: junction -d c:\mp3

You should note that you can’t use the root directory of a hard drive as the folder that you want to link to. You do need to specify at least one folder. It is also only possible to use junctions on ntfs hard drives.

For example, if the directory D:\SYMLINK specified C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32 as its target, then an application accessing D:\SYMLINK\DRIVERS would in reality be accessing C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS. Directory symbolic links are known as NTFS junctions in Win2K

[tags]freeware, windows, linux, symbolic links, junction, sysinternals<7tagS>[/tags]