Installing Steam on a Virtual drive?

[guiguibaah]

Hey all!

I've been running Mint 17.3 off a bootable USB, which has Steam installed on it, and 2 small games (don't starve). I run it on a bootable USB as when I'm on lunch break at work, so at lunch I reboot my work PC, run Mint, and access my small STEAM library from the USB drive. My boss hasn't minded (so far)

I'd like to add a 3rd game, however there isn't enough space on the USB to do so. There's also no free USB slots left (I'd just add another USB stick) - so that leaves the internal HDD.

Since the machines run Win 8, all drives are NTSF. Steam will not let me make a new Steam library folder without execute permissions.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/di ... 7574115543

I not going to shrink the NTSF partion via Gparted to create an external ext4, as that would give the IT guys a bit of a fit. I was thinking, however, of making a smaller 4 gig virtual file with execute permissions (such as a home-rw) on the computer's HDD (i've got 60 gigs alloted user space), mounting it, then using that as a steam library (if it can be done...) Unfortunately, my Mint-fu isn't very good, so I though I'd come here for some suggestions.

Any thoughts?
Thanks!

[uberdorf]

I'm not entirely clear on this, but this plan makes me think you might get into trouble at work for messing with the computers, lol.

If you are saying you want to install linux mint onto the work harddrive so you can play steam games, then you might want to allocate more space, like maybe 20-30 GB.

I'm wondering why you just don't buy a bigger flash drive instead of messing with your employers computers. I've seen 64 GB flash drives at Walmart IIRC.

[Booman]

If you are using an external drive, might as well install Mint 17.3 on it with your Steam games.
I suggest using USB 3.0 because 2.0 will make Linux and games pretty slow loading. Once loaded games should run fine until they have to write to disc for saving/loading.
I've thought about doing this as well because you can set persistence when creating a live USB drive. This way you can update Mint, install drivers and games.
Instead I install Mint 17.3 on my computer at work and it runs really nice. I have to use VM Ware and Windows for a few proprietary programs, but I am able to use Linux for just about everything else.

[Jaydemir]

Sorry to bump such an old topic, but isn't the maximum amount of persistent storage on a USB bootable disk only 4GB?

Would partitioning a bigger USB flash drive into two sections do the trick?

[Booman]

Very good point... I didn't realize that persistence was limited to 4GB because of Fat32
Dang! So that rules out a bunch of games.
I have never successfully partitions a flash drive, but you can use an external drive as previously mentioned.
Kinda sucks hauling around an external drive when a flash drive fits in your pocket.

If you "can" partition a flash drive, then get one of those 128 GB drives and you won't need persistence.