I'm just getting back into MW after a long break. One thing I've never done before is have multiple installs on the computer at once, but I can see why it's good idea. The thing is, I hate "wasting" disk space on identical data. So I came up with a trick that cuts the wasted space down by 560MB per additional copy of Morrowind. In order for this to work both copies must be on the same hard disk, and it needs to be formatted NTFS. This is a little technical so don't attempt it unless you feel comfortable in Windows Explorer etc.

1. Copy the whole Morrowind folder (as normal).
2. Put the code below in Notepad and save it as a .bat file.
3. Put that file in the Data Files folder of the original Morrowind install.
4. Run it.
5. Open the newly created "clone" folder.
6. Move the contents to the Data Files folder in duplicate Morrowind install.
7. Answer yes to overwrite.

So what does all that do? It creates a "hardlink" to those files. That's like one physical file being in two places at once. I singled out those files because they're big and normally won't be changed (if you did change them it would change both copies). The next biggest files are in the video folder, so you might want to adapt this technique for those as well.

And yes a realize it's a little silly to worry about 560MB these days, but I couldn't resist.

Making hard links on Windows requires more arcane command lines than on Linux. Heh. What's the purpose of "%~p0" ?

Yes, I think there's a somewhat simpler command in Vista actually, but I'm still on XP and this should work with both. (Not tested in Vista though.) %~p0 is the path of the batch file. For some reason that command requires a fully qualified path.

Well I don't think it's silly to worry about 560MB, and am on XP as well, so thanks for the handy tip.

Thanks for this, thats 560 MB per copy of MW i can have for mods, music, porn, etc.

Very much agreed. And appreciated.
Thank you, ManaUser.

It would be good to see this tip added to CCNA's pinned Multiple Copies thread.

Quality tip. Even with two 300Gb harddrives in the computer I always seem to be almost out of space so this will definetly come in handy (currently have 3 different morrowind installs and may need to add another soon)

Done with props given to ManaUser

Please forgive my ignorance, but why do you need more than 2 Morrowind installs? I have 2 installs on my hard drive: one for playing and one for mod testing.

I would be greatly interested in learning the benefits of having more than two installs. Thanks.

Naturally I can only speak for myself, but the reason I have more than two is that I have one for modding, one for mage like characters and one that's being used to test mods I've downloaded to see if I want to add them to my game. Eventually I'll be setting up an install with stealth (thief, assassin, hunter and so on) based characters in mind and finally an install geared towards fighter type characters. Ofcourse the 3 specialised setups are more of a luxury than a necessity.

I could easily have four installs just with the "one modding, one playing" approach. Two times two (English version + French version) equals four. Since the content of the BSAs is the same in all cases (voice files aren't in the BSA, all text is in the ESM, and they didn't translate the couple of 6th House graffiti textures)...

Same kind of considerations here.
I currently have five (still being set up with different mods and props to OldeCow69) and this tip is therefore very useful, especially when you think about all the duplication involved in backing-up as well. They are:
- MW 1 - Mage - with Mephisto's Cap Remover and Ald Vendras, some other landmasses
- MW 2 - Freebooter - probably GCD and lottsa dungeons, some different landmasses that would conflict
- MW 3 - Expanded - for MWE, MWSE etc and yet more different mods
- MW 4 - WIP - for customizing, merging and generally fiddling around with mods without messing up a gaming install
- MW 5 - Test - a clean installation for testing stuff fiddled with in MW4 or looking at mods that might warrant checking before putting them into a game install

This thread explains some other folks' reasons for having more than one or two installations - Multiple Morrowind Installations -, how do you do it? And why?

7 copies installed here at present

5 on game-rig:
1 basic, not normally used, for ease of copy/paste when others get "beyond repair" or simply datafiles meshes/textures become too congested from all kinds of mods; another one for running clean, without external programs
then 3 with MWE, MWSE, and both
then 2 on the internet-rig, mostly used for beta-stuff and similar.

and considering 1 more, with GCD
gets confusing ... life was simple, before MW

You know, I hadn't even thought of using separate installs for each character. It's easy to load and unload mods with the "snapshot" feature, but I guess keeping them completely separate would even simpler and maybe safer.

So far I've got three copies. One for playing, one for modding, and one for testing mods I'm thinking of using. I figure I'll just delete and reinstall that last one every so often when it gets too full of junk.

I use multiple installs for mod testing and such too. However, large scale mods usually get their own install like Wizards Islands or similar, or Total Conversion mods or more mundanely, the large landmass mods that conflict with each other.

And, with a Vanilla Game to copy and paste, it is easy to do this. Just test the copy and pasted one before you put mods on it as the file copy does not always go well. Blame Windows for that. If it works and there are no errors, then add the mod(s) you want and enjoy.

I added copies of ManaUser's original post to the relevant threads in Emma's and CI's forums, with credits to ManaUser .