How to make data drive my main one?

[Green Blockhead]

I have a new laptop this christmas and it has three drives: Boot, the C drive, Data, the D drive, and Recovery, the E Drive. I assume that Boot is the SSD (solid-state drive) included with the laptop, but I want to make D my "C" drive, as it has exactly 881GB of storage space while my SSD has 120 (118, to be exact).

Basically, whenever Steam asks me to install a game, I always want to install it on the D drive, but I want to make it my primary, main hard drive. I wish to boot from the C drive though, as the name states.

Anyone get what I mean? I just want Program Files and stuff to be on the D drive.

[Handsome Jack]

To do that, you'd need to clone your solid state drive, and migrate everything, wiping everything on your D drive. This requires a program such as Acronis True Image.

My opinion, I think it's better if you keep things as is. For me, I keep all my games on my HDD, and my solid-state drive has my operating system and the programs I use the most. The programs I want to move to D: but I still have to use C to boot them, I use Link Shell Extension to save space. If you need to boot some games from your SSD to decrease load times, put them there instead.

[Nutter t.KK]

You can tell Steam to use the D: Drive for most, but not all games.

To enable it: In steam: Settings -> Download + Cloud -> Steam Library Folders -> Add Library Folder.

After that any time you're installing a new "compatible" game you get an drop down box asking where would you like to install it.


I've got a over a Terra byte of games. So most of my games are on My "game" Drive, the rest are on my Main Drive. I actually have TWO more hard disks just for various reasons.

[bronislav84]

I've tried just renaming the boot drive but the system won't let it. Also having this problem, but I've gotten used to it.

If it's just a Steam issue for you, reinstall it to the drive you want your games on. By default Steam puts games on the drive it's installed onto. You can change it's directory for games, but this way insures you have them all on the drive you want.

When installing anything else, just go to Advanced and change the drive it goes to while keeping the path otherwise intact. Like 32 bit should still go to Progress Files (x86) and 64 bit programs should go in Program Files for consistency. Also go to your user folder and choose to "move" the folders. Like change the drive letter for My Pictures to the TB drive.

This method takes away basically all the issues since all the defaults cease going on the SS drive. You still need to change the drive letter for programs being installed manually anyway and can never use recommended install settings, but other than still having install-to drive not be the OS boot C drive, all these problems are fixed kinda since your save location for images becomes D: something, Steam ceases installing to the SS drive, and stuff runs fine from the non boot drive once installed there.

[dragonskull]

It is possible to change the drive letter, to do this you need to go to Disk Management which you can find when using mmc. It's rather a long techie talk I can elaborate if you want but if it's only for ease of installation you can also change the default installation directory to the one you would rather like, this is done in regedit, same story here, I can elaborate but let me know ;-)

[bronislav84]

I tried Disk Management. I get an error when renaming C, even to an unused letter. That's why I'm suggesting the method I did.

[dragonskull]

I think that's probably because of a lot of associations which are tied to the C drive by your OS and a lot of other factors such as programs, drivers etc.

[bronislav84]

I tried to do this as soon as the system booted up for the first time. Only associations were default ones. I think they just don't allow it anymore and it's only on older OSs.

[dragonskull]

Well if you're really desperate you can also format the system en completely install it, that way you can do it how you want :-)