Issues, Workarounds & Localization

To the mods; Not sure if this could go here or in another forum. this was a "best guess". Feel free to move.

DISCLAIMER - I will NOT be held responsible for any damages that could occur using these methods. It works for me, I did the steps as I wrote this out. You're on your own, but don't hesitate to ask questions BEFORE you move stuff around.

TL;DR#1 - Found directories that were full with TreeSize, moved data that could be safely moved to another drive, then linked directories moved to old drive location via junctions using Link Shell Extension.

TL;DR#2 - If you run an SSD like me with Windows, and use it for more than just EVE, you might be running out of space. This outlines what I did to clear up my drive space. This MAY not be for the user who's not ENTIRELY comfortable moving stuff around on hard drives, or has limited experience with their machines. On a difficulty scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the hardest, I'd rate this at about a 6 for the less confident. The danger factor for moving EVE related materials is around 2/10 as the software will recreate what is missing, but moving anything outside that could be a 12/10.

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****CAUTION****
Before I begin, I would STRONGLY suggest you avoid moving anything out of your Windows, or Program Files directory unless you SPECIFICALLY understand the ramifications of what COULD happen. Depending on what you move, you COULD get an OS that no longer boots. You COULD end up having to reinstall whatever application you're trying to move. SOMETIMES applications completely override the junction by deleting it, then recreating the directory. BE CAREFUL WITH WHAT YOU MOVE.

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I'm a gamer, and performance enthusiast, and have my main machine installed with Win7 and a single 128gig SSD drive, and plenty of platter drives after(1). One of my drives is a 320gig 3mbps SSD drive that used to hold my old "gamer" OS prior to my purchasing the SSD(2). Today I noticed that my SSD drive was getting pretty full, so I decided to start moving some of the bloat I don't need from the SSD to the old 320 platter drive, so I wiped the Windows related files off of it (Simple SHIFT-DEL) and cleared up tonnes more space. The biggest app on my SSD drive, by far, was CCP with its caching, its downloads, and other misc stuff I've collected since two massive patches ago on this particular SSD. So, decided to do some house cleaning. I also run three other Trinity clients, as well as two clients for Sisi and one for Duality, all of which these were moved to the platter drive.

There are a couple of applications that I used to first isolate drive use, and make sure that everything was still happy when running.

The first application I used was Treesize (http://www.jam-software.com/freeware) and used it to pick off what directories on the SSD were the most full. Second, I used an application called Link Shell Extension (Henceforth LSE) (http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/hardlinkshellext.html) which adds the abilities to create junctions, hard links, and symbolic links to other files and directories. The non-geek description of what those terms are is basically putting a bookmark on your hard drive (In this case your SSD) to let your OS know where to find the files you've moved (Which is now on another, bigger drive), all the while not using any more drive space on the SSD.

So, as I said, the first thing I did was find what directories were the fattest. Turns out that my "ProgramData" directory was pretty chunky, as is my "Program Files (x86)" directory. I first peered into the Program Files directory and noted that the largest in there was CCPs directory hitting at 10gig, next Electronic Arts, then Civ5. Since I want all of those to be on the SSD, I left that all as is, then moved on to the ProgramData directory. I noticed another CCP directory that weighed in at another 10gig of data. Moving inside that, I noticed that there was a lot of cached data for all my clients, and downloaded files from CCP. So this can be safely moved from the SSD to the other drive. Copying the c:\ProgramData\CCP directory to my H:\LinksForSSD\CCP\ drive, I waited, and didn't touch anything else until it was complete (Took about 3 minutes to copy the 10 gig of data). Notice that I first COPYING the data from one to the other. The reason for this is that sometimes if you start MOVING files around, if Windows has its hand on a file or directory, and then it becomes a serious pain to continue the move. Win7 does allow you to skip, but if you're using XP, it just says "screw this, I'm going home". For safety sake, copy, then delete. Often times when you copy, Windows will let you without interruption. The problem with the move is that if something has its hands on it, a move DELETES the file, and since something has its paws on it, Windows won't let the file be moved.

After the cache stuff was moved over, I deleted the old directory on the SSD, then used the LSE to make a junction. To do this, go to where you copied the CCP directory (In my case, H:\LinksFromSSD) right-click on that CCP folder SSD, select "Pick Link Source". Now go over to the directory where this old data was (C:\ProgramData) right click somewhere NOT on a directory or file in this window, select "DROP AS" then "JUNCTION". Poof, you're done. Now what happens when you launch EVE is when EVE wants to access anything that should be in C:\ProgramData\CCP\EVE\Whatever it actually is going to read from H:\LinksFromSSD\CCP\EVE\Whatever but doesn't realize it. The OS hides the details of the physical location of the files from EVE.

So now its a matter of lather, rinse, and repeat until I've squeezed enough space out of my SSD.


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*1 - 4 500gig platter drives @ 3mbps, 1 320gig platter @3mbps
*2 - WinXP with most services disabled