Introduction

These instructions cover configuring a NTFS disk containing Steam games, that was previously used in a Windows environment, to work with Proton on Linux. This allows a user to use the same files to play games on both Windows and Linux without needing to reinstall games for each operating system.

NOT OFFICIAL - USING NTFS IS NOT RECOMMENDED

This is not an official Valve guide. It exists on the Valve wiki, but it is user contributed content.

Valve discourages the usage of NTFS to store a steam libray as it may lead to unexpected errors. Specially for cases where a library is shared between multiple OSs.

If you use this method, you are using an unsupported environment. Please report this whenever you file an issue as it may be the source of the problem and it ends up wasting developer's time.

You WILL run into problems where games don't start. You WILL run into problems where games crash unexpectedly.

Tested On

Ubuntu versions (Click to expand)

Ubuntu 19.04
Ubuntu 20.04
Ubuntu 21.04

Pop_OS! versions (Click to expand)

Pop!_OS 19.04
Pop!_OS 20.04
Pop!_OS 21.04

Configuring and Automounting the NTFS Partition

Create a Mount Point

Create a mount point for the NTFS game disk:

$ sudo mkdir /media/gamedisk

Find the User ID, Group ID, attached disk partition, and the UUID using the following commands:

User ID

$ id -u

Group ID

$ id -g

By default, both should be 1000

Attached Disk Partition

$ sudo fdisk -l

It should be labeled similar to /dev/sda2

The trailing letter and number (a2) will depend on how many disks are attached.

UUID

$ sudo blkid

Find the line where the first column matches the label of the fdisk command.

For example, /dev/sda2 would match this line:

...
/dev/sda2: UUID="38CE9483CE943AD8" TYPE="ntfs" 
...

Copy the UUID.

Editing fstab

You've made it this far. Just wanted to remind you again that [using NTFS is not recommended](#NOT OFFICIAL - USING NTFS IS NOT RECOMMENDED).

Edit the fstab file to mount the partition:

$ sudo nano /etc/fstab

At the bottom of the file, add the following line (changing UUID, uid, and gid where needed):

UUID=38CE9483CE943AD8 /media/gamedisk ntfs uid=1000,gid=1000,rw,user,exec,umask=000 0 0

On Ubuntu, as long as ntfs-3g is installed using ntfs as the filesystem type will work

Reboot the computer for the changes to take effect:

$ sudo reboot

If the partition is mounted as read-only after reboot

If Windows is installed on the NTFS partition, the Windows Fast Startup feature can cause the mount command to fail. To prevent that, consider to disable it. Example tutorial: PassFab: Disable Fast Startup

Preventing NTFS Read Errors

THERE HAS BEEN A REPORT THAT THIS MAY CAUSE DATA LOSS

Due to the nature of NTFS, creating files/folders with names that are invalid on Windows will cause disk errors (leading to games that don't launch). The most common issue is a : (colon) character in filenames that Proton creates on the NTFS disk.

Fixing this is pretty simple: create the /compatdata folder on the mounted NTFS disk as a symlink that points to a folder on a Linux partition.

Creating the symlink:

$ mkdir -p ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata
$ ln -s ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata /media/gamedisk/Steam/steamapps/

If the /compatdata folder already exists on the mounted disk BEFORE the symlink, DELETE IT!

Turning off case-sensitivity in file names

Sometimes case-sensitivity can be an issue and lead to files not being found, because their names differ in case from what is expected. In such cases, mounting the NTFS partition with lowntfs-3g may solve the problem (source: https://serverfault.com/questions/901855/ntfs-3g-ignore-case). To do that, edit the entry in /etc/fstab as follows:

UUID=38CE9483CE943AD8 /media/gamedisk lowntfs-3g uid=1000,gid=1000,rw,user,exec,umask=000 0 0

And then reboot.