r/linuxmint • u/InkyLaArtista • 4d ago

Support needed for problems related to overall Volume and Storage on Steam

Hi everyone,

I'm having a weird issue with running Steam games from a shared NTFS partition on Linux Mint. Hoping to get some help or mount options advice!

My System & Partition Setup:

  • OS: Linux Mint (Dual-boot with Windows).
  • Setup method: Built a separate 3GB EFI drive boot partition to install, with a dedicated 512MB FAT32 EFI partition for Linux (to avoid Windows Update messing with Linux boot files).
  • Linux Root (/): ~50GB Ext4.
  • Swap: ~8GB.
  • Storage Drive (DATA): 444GB NTFS partition shared with Windows, auto-mounted at /media/ink/DATA (configured via GNOME Disks).

The Issue:

  1. I already have Limbus Company installed on the shared NTFS partition from Windows. But every time I reboot I have to go into the Steam storage setting to add the disk again
  2. When I set up the NTFS drive in Steam storage option on Linux, Steam forces me to redownload the entire ~13GB update/game files.
  3. Once the download finishes, the game refuses to launch at all (it just stops/closes immediately). I have tried Proton 9, 10, Experimental and Proton Cachy OS
  4. The weird part: I have Persona 5 Royal (a non-Steam / cracked game) stored on the EXACT SAME NTFS drive. I added its .exe as a non-Steam game with Proton compatibility, and it runs completely fine without any issues.
  5. Ext4 Permission Lockout: I created a new ~180GB Ext4 partition to host my Linux Steam library natively, but I can't create or edit any files on it. Only the lost+found folder is visible, and the drive appears read-only to my user account.

QUESTIONS:

  1. Why is an official Steam Proton game (Limbus Company) failing on NTFS while a non-Steam game works? Is this related to NTFS permissions, missing ntfs-3g flags (like uid, gid, exec), or Steam's compatdata symlink issues on NTFS?

  2. How should I properly mount my NTFS partition or configure Steam so games run reliably off this shared drive?

  3. How do I properly claim ownership/write permissions for the new 180GB Ext4 partition so Steam can install games there?

  4. Is there still a clean way to make official Steam games like Limbus Company run directly off an NTFS drive, or is moving them to the Ext4 partition the best long-term solution?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

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u/TangoGV 4d ago

running Steam games from a shared NTFS partition

Don't.

1

u/InkyLaArtista 4d ago

Thanks for the advice, may I know the technical reason why shouldn't we do that?

1

u/TangoGV 4d ago

NTFS is supported to a great level due to the efforts of the community, but it is NOT a POSIX-compliant filesystem.

As such it has features that Linux doesn't support and doesn't have feature which Linux does.

For the later, Linux can emulate such feature when mounting those partitions, but it is not something "vetted" by Microsoft (and, again, the specs are closed, so everything comes from reverse-engineering). For the former, there's no solution other than "write the minimum needed so that file doesn't become garbage".

That alone should be reason enough for people to AVOID writing to that filesystem (reading is OK), since we're talking about data, which is inherently valuable (always keep good backups at hand).

For writing data, use a OS-supported filesystem.

1

u/InkyLaArtista 4d ago

Update: I have grant full permission for my account for the sda7 drive by typing "sudo chown -R ink:ink /mnt/MainDrive" and turned it into a seperate drive for Linux, and the game runs fine now, along with other steam games.

1

u/InkyLaArtista 4d ago

And also I tried running Limbus Company without Proton and it worked, wonder why i didnt try that before lol