Duplicate files.

[SimonPeters116]

I bought the whole franchise of Assassinss Creed games off Steam recently, and found that my Games Drive wasn't big enough 😲
So I bought another drive, double the size, from 1TB to a 2TB NVMe.
Hoping to save time, I copied my game drive onto another drive, took out the small one, fitted the bigger one and moved my Game drive copy back onto the new drive. Rebooted my system and expected everything to be hunky-dory Unsurprisingly, it wasn't. Quell Surprise!
So I set to and re-downloaded/installed everything from Steam again, the old games and the new. My new drive is now almost full again, which is a bit of a surprise tbh. The old 1TB was only 2 games left to download, but only had 70GB space left and I had almost 200GB to download and install (AC Valhalla is about 130GB). The new 2TB is also now down to 70GB of space free

Anyhow, to Duplicate Files. I installed Auslogics Duplicate File Finder and told it to check my Games Drive. Among all the duplicates (from the old Games Drive copy) there are multiple copies of all the DX9 dll files. Each AC game has its own DX9 dll files and Steam also has the same files of its own.
For example:-



So I'm now wondering. If Steam has these files in its commons , does every AC game need one as well? I considered deleting one of the files from one of the games, then verifying local game files through the Steam app, but bottled out. I don't want to break the game.
So down to the brass tacks of my question. Does anyone know, through being a programmer or at least being involved in that side of things. Would deleting the individual games copies of these files, but leaving the Steam common copies, break the games or not???
I'm looking to save space on my drive.

 

[TonyCarter]

Depends how the game has been written/coded and whether it provides the embedded libraries 'just in case', or whether they're hard-coded to a specific folder within the game files...and of course whether they require a specific version of that library vs the generic one that Steam or Windows might install.

But I tend to tell the game launcher where the new default install location will be before copying everything back over. Some will search for existing installs, verify the files, then work perfectly...others require you to start downloading the game again, pausing it, quitting the launcher, replacing the part-download with the backup, and then re-starting the download.

 

[SimonPeters116]

Ah, right, got it. As each AC game is a stand alone game I think, each game will want its own DX9 files.
Although having said that, the rebooted Tomb Raider games are stand alone games and I didn't notice them having individual DX9, or anything else, files. I'll just leave it as it is.

Ref reinstalling games. I was being old, daft and lazy, and in a hurry
I picked up the files and put them over there. Changed the filing cabinet. Then picked up those files and put them back, expecting it all to work seamlessly. At my age, with my years of experience of mucking about in computers, I should have known better. It never works seamlessly like that. They say "you live and learn", I obviously haven't learned, or I'm an eternal optimist