Linux Gaming Tweak: Steam on NTFS Drives

Auto-Mount Steam Drives

If you want to see how to install Steam on Linux, see my other post: The Best Linux Software.

Are you having trouble launching games, even though they've installed correctly? This may happen if you're storing your games on an NTFS-formatted drive. This shouldn't be an issue if you're storing your games on the same drive that Steam is on, but some gamers prefer to put Steam on their main drive and game files on another SSD or HDD.

To fix this problem, you'll need to try a few things. First, you'll need to install the ntfs-3g package, which is meant for better interoperability with Linux.

sudo apt install ntfs-3g

Next, you should set up the /etc/fstab file to automatically mount your drives on boot. To automatically mount your drives when the computer boots up, you'll have to create the folders you want to mount your drive to first. I store mine in the /mnt folder using names that I'll recognize, but you can create your folders wherever you want.

mkdir /path/to/folder

For example:

mkdir /mnt/steam_library

To automatically mount drives upon system boot, you will need to collect a few items. The UUID is the identification number connected to whichever drive you're using to store Steam games.

Drives are usually labeled similar to /dev/nvme0n1p1 or /dev/sda1, so you'll need to find the line in the output of the command below that correlates to your drive and copy the UUID over to the /etc/fstab file.

sudo blkid | grep UUID=

Next, you'll need your uid and gid.. To find these, run the following command:

id -u && id -g

Now that you have collected the necessary information, open the /etc/fstab file:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Each drive you want to mount on boot should have its own line in the /etc/fstab file that looks similar to this:

UUID=B64E53824E5339F7 /mnt/steam_library ntfs-3g uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0

Now all you need to do is unmount your drive and re-mount it. You can unmount the drive by doing this (be sure to use the correct drive name here):

sudo umount /dev/sdxX

You can re-mount all your drives by executing the following:

sudo mount -a

If you don't know what your drive name is, or you're nervous about unmounting and re-mounting, simply reboot your computer, and it will be done for you automatically.