ESO on Windows 11 - how to move the Live folder?

baratron · August 2023

Hello, OneDrive on Windows 11 is the bane of my existence. There doesn't seem to be a way to use it for BACKUPS instead of as a primary drive. Windows 11 saves to the Cloud (TM) by default, and then tries to tell you that you're running out of disc space at 5 GB, and would you like to buy some more? No, I'd like to use the 1 TB disc on my computer that I own, thank you very much.

The relevance of this to ESO is that the game by default saves its Game Data to the Documents folder, which is one of the folders that OneDrive likes to gobble up for itself. On bad internet days, I notice lag because my computer is having to read/save data from the internet instead of from my local SSD.

I would therefore like to move the Documents\Elder Scrolls Online\live folder outside of the Documents folder, to anywhere else on my hard drive which OneDrive doesn't attempt to interfere with. How do I do it?

The only up-to-date information I can find is how to move the game installation, which I don't need to do because OneDrive doesn't eat Program Files. I just need to move my saved data.

Thanks in advance,
Someone who has been using computers for the past 38 years and really should NOT be as confused by this as she is.

ixthUA · August 2023

You can uninstall onedrive.

BretonMage · August 2023

Now that Windows forces the Documents folder to be a part of Onedrive, games REALLY should not be storing anything in the Documents folder at all. (Least of all game saves, like the 600MB that I found Skyrim using.)

My partner (who works in tech) kindly spent his afternoon extricating my Documents folder from Onedrive's grasping reach and placed it back in the local user folder. It wasn't straightforward, but it's possible.

Soarora · August 2023

I do not have an answer for your question however I can tell you that I also have suffered from OneDrive. I just unlinked my account. Still installed, just in case, but now it never tries to upload.

baratron · August 2023

Ah, perhaps I was unclear. I am quite happy with OneDrive backing up all my personal documents, so I neither want to unlink/uninstall OneDrive nor move my files somewhere other than Documents.

What I want is to move my ESO save data out of Documents. I'm sure this must be possible, I've seen older posts on here talk about how to do it with earlier versions of Windows. But I haven't seen any advice for Windows 11, and it seems to behave quite differently than 10.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

Myrnhiel · August 2023

The very first thing I did when receiving my new computer with Windows 11 was deactivating OneDrive as I've already read much before about it being not a blessing but a curse.

I haven't had a problem with it since. But I don't know if you can still do it with data already being saved in there.

Reverb · August 2023

There is no option in ESO to define where the game looks for those files. On a laptop I used to have I was able to have a permanent redirect where the game still thought the files were in the C: drive document folder and read and wrote to that location, when really the files were on the D drive. That’s the best you can do.

baratron · August 2023

Reverb wrote: »

There is no option in ESO to define where the game looks for those files. On a laptop I used to have I was able to have a permanent redirect where the game still thought the files were in the C: drive document folder and read and wrote to that location, when really the files were on the D drive. That’s the best you can do.

Okay, great! How do I do it?

ixthUA · August 2023

You can move documents folder anywhere by using directory junction.
In windows console, mklink /j "link location" "folder location"