How to Setup Expanded Storage for Steam

by Rian

Recently I moved the m.2 SSD from a NAS to a Mac. A NAS running on Linux was better served with expanded memory, so I thought to use the SSD to expand the internal storage of my workstation. Upgrading process was straightforward, but there was a problem moving games from Steam Library to the newly expanded storage.

Symptoms

Steam simply does not support external storage of any kind. The documentation that I found did not made it clear whether non-system storage installed internally would count as “external” in Steam, but looking at the bizarre behaviors of Steam, it appears that is the case.

If you have set up dual booting on your machine, it is, in theory, possible to use an extra internal storage to save all gaming contents. This is a matter of accessing a drive from both OS, not the Steam. What Steam does not do, however, is recognizing game files for different OS. Let’s say you have Frostpunk installed from Windows. Then over on the Mac side, Mac version of the Steam would find Frostpunk either out of date or broken, therefore needs to be downloaded all over again.

Personally I found it more baffling, because, as I understand it, Valve is still working with SteamOS, a Linux distro. This problem is not limited to Mac users; this can happen to anyone who has two versions of Steam, using the same storage.

Solutions

There is a silver lining in this story. While Steam does not elegantly handle game files from different OS, you can still choose where that library folder goes inside the folder.

1. Under Steam preferences, select “Storage”.
2. Clicking on the current storage will let you add a drive, but instead of choosing a drive, choose “Let me choose another location”.
3. Create an arbitrary folder inside the drive of your question with distinguishable name. (e.g. SteamLibraryMac, SteamLibraryLinux)
   

One thing to note, Steam cannot remove a library. There is an option to “remove library”, but it will come back on the listing on the next restart of the Steam. I don’t know why or how Steam is holding on to a library folder, but all I could find was this is an age-long bug that hasn’t been quashed. It’s better to get it right on the first try.