Steam over NAS

[ChildOfAtom]

Hi guys,

I was just thinking about building a NAS box out of an old computer I have. I was gonna buy some hard drives and stuff to make it worth while but I also had an Idea.

Could I access my steam Library over the network? If I had two computers running different accounts with similar game titles (like both of them playing Terraria or CS:GO), could they both access the same files?
I am not expecting incredible speeds. Just wondering if it was possible. 

[CornOnJacob]

Welcome to the forum

 

When you install steam games, you can choose which drive/partition to install them to. Just choose a drive in your NAS.

As far as accessing the same files, I doubt it would work, but I've never tried it myself. There was a thread here about accessing game files on a NAS. You could do what he did and put the files there, and then copy/install them to each computer instead of running one copy many times.

[Freaky_spider]

dont think so

[technovore]

Even if you manage to instakk them on a network drive, you won't be able to use the same files for two instances of that game due to R/W-permissions.

[L.E.D]

It is quite simple actually I did it, Just map the network drive from the NAS, (I used FreeNAS), I usually install the game to the C:\ drive and run the game to let it create any files it may need, then once that is done I create a symbolic link between the original directory and the directory on the NAS,

 

If you want to tackle this route let me know and I will type a more detailed version of how to do this.

 

Nathan

[ChildOfAtom]

Even if you manage to instakk them on a network drive, you won't be able to use the same files for two instances of that game due to R/W-permissions.

Could I run different games?

 

 

It is quite simple actually I did it, Just map the network drive from the NAS, (I used FreeNAS), I usually install the game to the C:\ drive and run the game to let it create any files it may need, then once that is done I create a symbolic link between the original directory and the directory on the NAS,

 

If you want to tackle this route let me know and I will type a more detailed version of how to do this.

 

Nathan

 

If I can run separate games concurrently I might try using the NAS for games but if I cant I dont see the point. I'd just use it for some long term storage.  

[SMURG]

You'd need to map the network drives for the NAS on each machine (i.e. assign them a drive letter), and select those drives as the install directory for the games. That would allow you to play games from the NAS. Then, if you ran Steam in a sandbox (i.e. using sandboxie) you might be able to use the same copy of game files for each user. The sandbox thing is definitely a "try at your own risk" thing though; it's worked for me when I've wanted to run multiple instances of games for the purposes of a terminal server though.

[faszinierend]

I'm not sure about multiple users but having the files on the NAS is no problem. Just add a network drive and in Steam chose a library folder on the NAS. I played wargame airland battle via NAS and had 0 problems. CS:GO lagged, but i'm not sure if that's because it streams game content or the game itself is fucked up after all the updates the "devs" made...

 

Edit:I attached a screenshot how it's set up... G: is a NAS drive.

[technovore]

Could I run different games?

 

 

 

If I can run separate games concurrently I might try using the NAS for games but if I cant I dont see the point. I'd just use it for some long term storage.  

I don't think so, I have reason to believe there's files that are always read and written when accesing any game....though it makes for a great project to try it all out, I would myself but I don't have any networked drives nor the time atm.

 

[faszinierend]

There is a steam.dll and one *.acf file per game in a library folder ... other than that i don't see anything that could cause conflicts.

The DLL will be loaded once and probably wont be locked and the *.acf files seem to be very short json files ... no reason to lock those.