this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Issues with games on secondary drive (lemmy.org)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) by ui3bg4r@lemmy.org to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Both primary and secondary ssd (internal both) are formatted Ext4 (linux mint)

I am facing this weird issue: Some games, they play flawless when installed in the secondary drive. Some others however, they don't launch. I have to move them to the primary drive for them to launch and then they work perfect.

How come some games are ok on the secondary drive, while others aren't? Have you experience this?

Everything I find online points to a drive being NFTS format, but mine are both Ext4, default settings and automounting.

Games that gave problems on secondary drive, but are perfect on primary driver; Ghost of Tsushima, Resident evil 4 and Witcher 3. They don't launch, and in the case of RE4 it even said my computer had a virus :D or was tampered when launched from the secondary drive (non-sense)

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[–] Laavu@sopuli.xyz 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, I have had wierd issues with Steam and external libraries. Mostly because of permissions and non-acsii characters in the path, but some have been unresolved. Steam is really complicated piece of software. The host OS, Steam linux runtimes and Proton all do their part. Flatpak can resolve and cause issues. That being said, external libraries are well tested on the Deck, and should work fine.

First step with troubleshooting would be logs. Check the Steam troubleshooting page on Arch wiki, and Proton Readme on Valve's github to get you started. You'll need to add PROTON_LOG=1 to launch options to get a log out of Proton. Also issue trackers for Proton and the linux Steam client are valuable resources.

I hope you get it solved.

[–] ui3bg4r@lemmy.org 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

I did now, it says Unhandled exception: System.TypeloadException: Could not load type of field ‘InstallerMesage.Form1+…’ due to: COuld not load file or assembly ‘Windows.Foundation.UniversalApiContract, …’ or one of its dependencies.

Does this tell you something?

PS: To clarify it is a rather long text that I get via the terminal when launching said game

[–] actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Are you logging your attempted game launches?

I wonder if the games are trying to search for files in a specific path, failing to find that path, and exiting. Or maybe something similar. The logs should tell you.

[–] ui3bg4r@lemmy.org 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I did now, it says Unhandled exception: System.TypeloadException: Could not load type of field 'InstallerMesage.Form1+......' due to: COuld not load file or assembly 'Windows.Foundation.UniversalApiContract, .....' or one of its dependencies.

Does this tell you something?

[–] actionjbone@sh.itjust.works 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, it says it couldn't load an API-related windows file/group of files. So yes, either something is missing, or something isn't in the expected location.

If it can't load a file, and if that file does exist, something path-related needs to be fixed.

Other folks have responded with good advice about things to try, so I won't repeat any of it here. Hopefully once you get that fixed, your games will launch!

[–] ui3bg4r@lemmy.org 3 points 9 hours ago

o have backported fixes on their VLC 3.0.21 package 11 times, I couldn't fix it, and also wasted a lot of time on it. In the end, I decided to run everything that works out of the box from the secondary, and those that give problems I move them to the primary drive. That way everything works. Ideally i'd have just all of them in one drive, but it's just not worth the effort to find out and fix each of them, it's some kind of nightmare. In the end, it's just a game location.

For those interested, from 13 games installed, 4 did not work in the secondary drive and 9 do. So it's not too bad of a %.

[–] db2@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

What does your mtab look like? It may or may not help.

[–] e0qdk@reddthat.com 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Haven't run into this personally, but most of my gaming on Linux these days is on the Steam Deck without anything particularly interesting going on storage-wise.

It'd probably help with debugging if you add the distro you are using into the text of your post. Also, how are you launching the games? (Steam? Lutris? Heroic? Something else?)

For RE4 specifically, Steam has it listed as "Incorporates 3rd-party DRM: The Enigma Protector", so you might be running into some shittiness from DRM on that one, perhaps?

If you're running on Fedora or related distros, check your system logs to see if SELinux is complaining about anything. Sometimes the security features are overzealous.

Best of luck!

[–] ui3bg4r@lemmy.org 3 points 21 hours ago

Linux mint, and I run the games via Steams. Indeed, I am aware of the DRM but the interesting part it only is a problem on the secondary drive and not on the primary drive. That must be pointing to the root cause... i just dont know what.

[–] RamRabbit@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Try using a folder symlink that encompasses the game's folder, so that the game thinks it is on the main drive, but is actually on the secondary drive. Might work around whatever issue is here.

Steps:

  1. Create a folder for the game: /home/Games/SpecificGameWithAnIssue

  2. Create a symlink from /home/Games/SpecificGameWithAnIssue to /mnt/DriveTwo/WhereTheGameNowLives

  3. Install game to /home/Games/SpecificGameWithAnIssue

  4. Run game

[–] ui3bg4r@lemmy.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Thanks for the explanation, i will try. On Step 3, shouldn't the game be installed in /mnt isntead of home?

[–] RamRabbit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

shouldn’t the game be installed in /mnt isntead of home

No.

The symlink creates a link between /home/Games/SpecificGameWithAnIssue (dir1) and /mnt/DriveTwo/WhereTheGameNowLives (dir2). Anything you put in dir1 will actually live in dir2. However, you can access all the files as if they are in dir1 (you can also access them directly from dir2, but we aren't going to do that here).

By installing it on the main drive (dir1), you are telling the game it is actually in dir1, and it should look at dir1 for its files. The fact they happen to be elsewhere is immaterial to the game, it's looking at dir1 for the files. Think of it like a magic portal, you step through a door and suddenly you are in neverland. The way to get to neverland is through that door.

I'm thinking this will workaround your issue as, for all intents and purposes, everything is on the main drive (they just happen to be stored elsewhere via the symlink).

[–] ui3bg4r@lemmy.org 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I see. When I tried the last step to move the game from /mnt to /home, it told me that it couldnt move because the folder already existed (the one i created in Step 1)

[–] RamRabbit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Have both directories be completely new, then install the game into the /home directory. I think you might be accidentally moving the symlinked folder around.

You can test you did it right by creating the symlink, then creating a text file in the /home directory. You will be able to see that from both the /home directory and from the /mnt directory.

[–] ui3bg4r@lemmy.org 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Update: I managed to create the symlink with the entire steamapps folder, to the point that Steam recognized the game as installed in /home while it was actually on /mnt. However, it failed to launch in the same way as it did when the symlink was not there.

[–] ui3bg4r@lemmy.org 2 points 1 day ago

Hey thanks. It does look complicated indeed. Maybe I did something wrong and I think I created a symlink and not even know where/how to remove it. I am not sure I am capable of that. I hope that someone has an idea of the root cause for this strange behaviour (I dont mean about the symlink, but rather why games need the primary drive to run)

[–] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

If they're launched through steam the sandboxing will likely prevent access to the place the symlink points to, I've encountered that before trying to do similar things