There are tricks to managing your Steam library if you are running low on space or simply setting up something new, from tricking Steam by copying files manually or the new feature which allows you to move games from within Steam. One other possible way to manage your time and bandwidth is to build yourself a small little webserver which caches any Steam game you have downloaded locally, so you can reinstall them without using up your bandwidth. Those familiar with Riverbed appliances and the like will already be familiar with this process but many gamers may not be. Ars Technica walks you through the build and teaches a bit about caching and basic webservers along the way; check it out you are not already well versed in setting up something similar.
"But there’s an alternative to having to re-download all your Steam games from the Internet: you can set up a local Steam caching server, so that once you download something, you’ve got it on your LAN instead of having to reach for it across the net and incur usage fees."
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I’ve been begging for Valve
I’ve been begging for Valve to do this in the client software for a while. Similar to Windows 10 local update sharing, I think Valve could do something great here. They sort of have the groundwork in place via library sharing and local streaming – detecting clients that are online and have games installed.
Cool. I did this on my unraid
Cool. I did this on my unraid serve after reading this. And it worked, awesome! Thanks for the share!
Why not just store a BACKUP
Why not just store a BACKUP of the game?
That’s slightly compressed so you’d save even more space.
I’m sure there is a use case for this, but I don’t see it for myself. I can move the entire “Steamapps” folder (or folders) if I need to, or create backups for modded games.
I don’t understand why someone would NOT have enough space locally but would choose to store the backup/download on a local server. Why would you have money for a local server and not enough to spend $50 or so for another hard drive?
I was thinking the same
I
I was thinking the same
I just back them up on an External Hard Drive and if i want to play that one game i just plug in my External HDD and restore it, but maybe for other people they just don’t want to have the Trouble on getting the External HDD, but it’s kinda weird i don’t understand why have another PC Running a Server just to install steam games
unless you already have a server doing something and you say might as well have a Steam Cache Server,
but it dose look very interesting after all i use my Old Laptop as an Server to transfer files or stream videos or Music works ok
Enhance Valve games
Enhance Valve games vacproof.com
I think Steam needs to
I think Steam needs to improve the backup functionality so it runs faster and it will serve a similar function without all the infrastructure. As it stands its good for preparing backups for storing on DVDs or CDs but its just not quick due to the single threaded compression it does.
Steam just needs to be able
Steam just needs to be able to run off a NAS already.