Split Steam game between hard drives (Witcher 3)

I have a relatively old system and wish to install The Witcher 3 from Steam in my SSD drive in order to get load times down. However, my SSD (D:) has only 37GB total, and the game installation allegedly needs 38GB. I also heard that SSD's need about 10% free space in order to perform well.

So what I am willing to do is split the installation between my SSD and a larger SATA drive using symlinks. i.e.:

Download and install the game in a Steam library in the SATA
Copy most of the files to a Steam library in the SSD
Make symlinks in the SSD pointing to some files in the SATA
Edit the game's manifest file so Steam believes it is installed in the SSD (Boltclock's answer here)

So my questions are:

Will this break some kind of Steam's or in-game checksums?
What kind of files (or which specific files/folders if someone knows) are less frequently used and thus will have less impact on load times if i put them in the SATA drive?
Do I have to keep some free space in the SSD for temporary files and the like?

Thanks in advance, and sorry if this is the wrong place to post it.

EDIT1: In this question, user Viper_Sb hints at something like this being possible, but it is not clear how.

EDIT2: Actually, the question mentioned in EDIT1 only deals with linking the whole game directory, not splitting it's parts.

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Quick Answer about "Split Steam game between hard drives (Witcher 3)"

Download and install the game in a Steam library in the SATA.

Copy most of the files to a Steam library in the SSD.

Make symlinks in the SSD pointing to some files in the SATA.

Can I split Steam games between drives?

You can move your Steam games to another drive right from your Steam library, just by clicking a button. If your computer uses multiple hard drives, Steam will install games by default to the main drive. If that gets full, you'll have to move your games to another drive.

How do I get Steam to recognize a game on another hard drive?

Below is the list of all the effective workarounds that you can try if Steam doesn't recognize the installed games.

Reinstall the Game without downloading.

Choose New Installation Drive.

Force Recognize Games using .acf cache.

Reconfigure the Library Folders.

Reinstall Steam.

Can you install Steam games in different locations?

In Steam, click on \u201cMenu\u201d at the top and select \u201cSettings.\u201d Choose \u201cDownloads,\u201d then \u201cSteam Library Folders\u201d from the center. Select \u201cAdd Library Folder\u201d and point it to your new games location.

Is it better to have games on a separate hard drive?

By having your games on a different hard drive, you allow your OS to use the space more effectively on its own drive. One of the thing modern OS's do is save data from memory to storage(SSD in this case) when it isn't likely to be used in a while.

How To Move Steam Games To Another Hard Drive 2020

Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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