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Guide: Installation of Oculus Software to Non-System Drives

cybereality
Grand Champion

NOTE: This guide is NOT NEEDED anymore as the setup installer supports multiple drives natively.


WARNING: Some users are experiencing issues with the steps below. You may wish to hold off performing these steps for the time being while we investigate. Thanks.

The team's releasing an update that enables installation of Oculus software and apps to drives other than your system drive (typically, C:\Program Files (x86)\Oculus) in one of the first Rift updates (likely the next 2-3 weeks). In the meantime, there is an unofficial workaround you can use to move your existing Oculus software and all installed games to a different drive.

Note that this is unsupported (!) and doesn't have a migration path back to a good state once we release the update in the next few weeks. Also, note that the full OculusSetup.exe functionality (uninstall, repair) won't work if you're using this workaround.

Your destination drive will need the following to be true:

  • NTFS file system
  • Not a network drive
  • Not a removable drive (like a portable external HD)
  • Its drive letter (such as E:\) won't change for any other reason
  • 1.2GB free space (in addition to the size of your installed games)


Process:

  1. Install Oculus using OculusSetup.exe ( www.oculus.com/setup - available Monday morning PST)
  2. Launch a command prompt with admin privileges:
    1. Win 7: Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> right-click Command Prompt, choose Run as administrator
    2. Win 8 or Win 10: Right-click Start or hit Win+X, choose Command Prompt (Admin)
  3. Shutdown the Oculus VR Runtime Service:
    1. Run in the command prompt: net stop OVRService
  4. Move your Oculus folder to another drive while maintaining permissions (as an example, E:\Oculus). You must move the folder using xcopy, or you will break Oculus and risk opening security holes in your system.
    1. Run in the command prompt: xcopy “C:\Program Files (x86)\Oculus” E:\Oculus\ /O /X /E /H /K
  5. Delete the “C:\Program Files (x86)\Oculus” directory
  6. Symlink your new directory with the old directory location:
    1. Run in the command prompt: mklink /d "C:\Program Files (x86)\Oculus" E:\Oculus
  7. Restart the Oculus VR Runtime Service:
    1. Run in the command prompt: net start OVRService
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113 REPLIES 113

SOTBMP
Protege
Good to know 😉
I always install Steam, Origin, UPlay or GOG Galaxy on non system drive.
Oculus Home should be also there 🙂

Anonymous
Not applicable
Thanks, cyber. Very useful!

TommyEn
Explorer
Would it work to install into an empty "Oculus" folder in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Oculus" that has already been symlinked?

dead4sure
Adventurer
Edit: Got so carried away with the questions that I forgot to say thanks for the guide! Cheers dude!

This is probably a stupid question coming from someone with 0 software dev experience but is it going to be a particularly difficult job for the Oculus dev team to change the installer to have a path selection?

I mean this as a genuine question not some snarky remark btw.

Also is anyone up for making a video tutorial on this?

michaeltieso
Explorer
Thanks for the guide @cybereality !

Anonymous
Not applicable
I'm now planning on using my SSD C: drive, at least until we get the official option of installing to other drives. I've had a busy morning of moving por... errr, I mean graphics and audio etc. files to my 😧 drive, and have also deleted/moved quite a few uncesscary apps from the C: drive. Antivirus software is overrated anyway!

I now have almost 70GB free 🙂 That should last a few weeks until the Rift software is updated.

Erroll
Protege
Assuming there is a folder that contains all the apps it would seem to make more sense to symlink that instead of the whole oculus program folder. This is what most of us used to do with Steam before they created the ability to have multiple app repository locations.

inter4ever
Honored Guest
After the update, will we be able to install games to a drive other than the one Oculus software resides in? or will we have to reinstall Oculus on the other drive first? I would prefer to have the main Oculus software on my SSD, and the game and experiences on an HDD.

cybereality
Grand Champion
So, this guide was to help people that absolutely don't have any space on C:. Personally, I'd rather use my spare drives, but I do have about 300GB on C: I could use for now. Then I'll re-download the files after the fix.

I think the way it will work is you'll install the Oculus app files (and thus all new games) into a directory of your choice. So then the Oculus files and game files will be all together, on whatever drive you choose.

Since the game save files mostly should be saved in AppData. You should be fine to install in the Oculus app on C: for now (if you have space for a few games) then uninstall/reinstall on a different drive one the fix is in place. And I believe all the saved games should still be there (just don't quote me, since I'm not sure how it will work exactly because they're still working on it). 

@Erroll I'm not sure if symlinking the sub-folder is the best idea. Engineering came up with these steps, so I assume there was a reason for the choice.

@dead4sure Yes. There were difficulties getting this working, which is why is didn't make it in as a launch feature. Mostly the issue had to do with wrangling Windows UAC so those popups didn't appear and break the experience. However, the team seems confident they can fix this soon.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV