How to Change Your Recording Save Location and Auto-Clean Storage: A Complete Guide

To get straight to the point, you change your recording save location in the output or save settings of whichever recorder you use, and it is most stable to point that folder at an SSD with fast write speeds.

If you also set up an automatic cleanup rule in advance for when storage fills up, you can almost completely prevent the situation where recording stops because the disk is full of recording files.

Below, we will go through it one at a time in order: changing the path, setting an SSD, and managing storage. If you only need to know where OBS is putting your files right now, Where does OBS save recordings? answers that first; this guide focuses on the drive choice and cleanup rules that apply to any recorder.

If you use DOR, you pick the folder once under Settings > File Management > File Save Path, and with Automatic File Management turned on, the oldest videos are cleared whenever your set storage cap is reached.

Three steps that work with any recorder

1. 1Check where your current recorder saves filesOBS: Settings → Output → Recording Path; NVIDIA app: the save location shown in the Alt+Z Gallery; Game Bar: the Captures folder inside Videos by default. For the detailed OBS procedure, see Where does OBS save recordings?.
2. 2Point the folder at an SSD or a drive with free spaceChange the save folder to a dedicated folder such as Recordings on an SSD. Keeping it off the OS and game drive stops game loading and recording writes from clashing on one disk.
3. 3Set up an automatic cleanup ruleUse Windows Storage Sense or a scheduled task to clear old recordings regularly, so a full disk never stops a recording.

The basic steps to change your recording save location

In OBS Studio, the folder where recording files are saved is set directly from the settings screen.

If you leave it at the default, recordings usually pile up inside your Videos folder or user folder, but if you change this path to the drive you want, all future recordings will be saved to the new folder.

For the NVIDIA app, Where NVIDIA ShadowPlay recordings are saved covers how to find its save location, and for Game Bar, How to Record Games With Xbox Game Bar does the same; the SSD choice and auto-cleanup rules below apply no matter which recorder you use.

• Open Settings from the Controls area at the bottom right of the OBS main screen. You can also reach it through File in the top menu, then Settings.
• Select Output in the left-hand tabs.
• Find the Recording Path item in the Recording section. Your current save location is shown here.
• Click the Browse button and choose the folder where you want to save recording files.
• Click OK to save the settings, and from your next recording on, files will pile up in the new folder.

Setting an SSD as your recording drive

Recording files are written to disk at tens of megabytes per second. So the write speed of your save drive directly affects recording stability. Recording at high resolution to a slow HDD raises the chance of dropped frames or file corruption, so it is better to set your recording path on a fast storage device such as a SATA SSD or M.2 SSD.

• If you have a dedicated recording SSD, create a separate folder like Recordings inside that drive and set it as your path.
• Separating the drive that holds your OS and games from your recording drive keeps game loading and recording writes from clashing on the same disk.
• If you have an M.2 NVMe SSD, it has the most headroom for high-resolution, high-frame-rate recording, and a SATA SSD is plenty for most 1080p recording.
• If you use an external SSD, make sure the USB connection is stable, and keep in mind that if the connection drops, your recording stops along with it.

Splitting folders by game makes management easier

Saving recordings split by title makes finding clips later much faster. For example, you might gather Valorant recordings in a Valorant folder on the SSD, and League of Legends recordings in a LoL folder.

OBS itself has no automatic per-title sorting, so you end up either changing the recording path to that folder each time you switch titles, or saving everything to one folder first and periodically moving files to organize them.

Automatic cleanup for when storage fills up

Depending on length and resolution, recording files can grow to hundreds of megabytes per minute. Even a few days of recording fills up an SSD quickly, so the key is to set up a rule in advance that regularly clears out old files. Instead of deleting by hand every time, you can automate it with operating system features and a simple script.

• Turning on Windows Storage Sense automatically empties temporary files and the Recycle Bin once the disk fills past a certain level, freeing up space.
• Keeping your recording folders consolidated in one place narrows the cleanup target to a single folder, making automation easier.
• Setting up a scheduled task to automatically delete files older than a certain period lets you, for example, automatically clean up recordings older than 30 days every week.
• Move any scenes you definitely want to keep to another folder or the cloud beforehand, so they are excluded from the automatic cleanup.

Using the replay buffer to keep only the moments you need

Recording everything continuously is a heavy storage burden, so using OBS's replay buffer lets you hold only the most recent stretch of time in memory and save just that section to a file with the save button when a good scene happens.

This way, only clips actually worth keeping pile up on your disk, making storage management much easier. That said, with this method too, the saved clips still have to be managed by folder yourself.

Changing the save location in DOR: Settings > File Management

DOR detects supported games when you launch them, records the whole match, and collects every recording in the app's My Clips (DOR auto game recording). That means the path setting, folder cleanup, and deletion rules covered above all live on one settings screen. Both the save folder and the auto cleanup limit sit under Settings > File Management.

1. 1Open File Management in SettingsIn the DOR app, open Settings and choose File Management. File Save Path at the top shows the folder your recordings currently go to, along with the free space left on your PC.
2. 2Point File Save Path to an SSD folderClick the path field and choose a folder such as Recordings on your SSD. New recordings are saved there from then on, and you still browse them in My Clips.
3. 3Turn on Automatic File ManagementSwitch on Automatic File Management and DOR deletes old videos automatically to keep storage below the capacity you set. No Task Scheduler job or cleanup script needed.
4. 4Set the auto management storage capIn File Auto-Management Storage Settings, pick a cap in GB or type your own. Start generous for your drive size and editing habits, then trim it down.

• Recordings are grouped by match in My Clips, so you find the game you want without digging through File Explorer.
• Favorite anything you want to keep. Favorited videos are left out of Automatic File Management and stay put.
• In League of Legends, VALORANT, PUBG, FC Online, Fortnite, CS2, and Overwatch, moments like kills are also saved as automatic highlight clips; in other games, you trim the moments you want from the auto recorded video and save them.
• Upload your best matches to dor.gg to keep them separate from your PC storage and share them with a link.

To sum up, whichever recorder you use, moving the save folder to an SSD and setting an automatic cleanup rule is the foundation of stable recording. If you are comfortable managing paths and cleanup yourself in OBS or the NVIDIA app, keep doing that; if you want games recorded automatically when you launch them, with the save folder and storage cap set on one screen, DOR is a good fit.