Hard drives

[TheBreadMuncher]

So I want to build a new system since my old one is getting old. If i download steam again onto the new hard drive would i be able to download the games and keep all my data from the games from my old computer or would everything restart from level 1 lets say or will i just not be able to re download the games if the old hard drive isn't plugged in? 

[SpookyCitrus]

If you clone everything from the old drive to the new SSD(hopefully) you'll have everything the same, all your files, the same Windows, plus games and programs. If you fresh install Windows on the new computer and then reinstall Steam you'll have to redownload your games. Most will still have the save files you made previously if you use Steam's cloud save feature. If you don't have that enabled, or the game doesn't use that feature then you will lose all progress, I would suggest making a backup of your important save files you don't want to lose on a flash drive before setting up Windows and fresh installing Steam on the new computer.

[TheBreadMuncher]

thankyou very much. One more thing will i just be able to transfer my games because i dont really need anything else from the hard drive as its just old school work pretty much and im going to put my windows onto an nvme ssd as its currently on the old hdd?

[SpookyCitrus]

37 minutes ago, TheBreadMuncher said:

thankyou very much. One more thing will i just be able to transfer my games because i dont really need anything else from the hard drive as its just old school work pretty much and im going to put my windows onto an nvme ssd as its currently on the old hdd?

If you leave that drive in the computer as a game drive you can show the fresh install of Steam where to find the game files, however I'm not positive if you can transfer over just the game files to a new drive, most games have files saved elsewhere as well. I would say the easiest things would be that or for you to fresh install Steam and reinstall the games. Trying to transfer them over will be a pain and might not work depending on how you do it.

[mariushm]

The official way would be to go in Steam and in the menu, you have Steam > Backup and restore games...

It will open a window like this:

 

Then you can check the games you want backed up and save them in a folder :

 

 

 

When you restore the games, Steam will also mark them as just installed, and Steam will run the pre-launch steps like "install c++ runtimes, install or update DirectX , install nvidia Physx" and so on...

 

If you don't want to waste disk space with backups, you could simply simply move or copy the data from your game folder , default is Steam > steamapps > common     to your new Steam installation.

Restart Steam and it should show the games as installed and ready to play.

Worst case scenario, you may have to right click on the game,  select Properties, then go to Local Files and click on Verify integrity of local files.

 

If there's a game that needs to install some stuff first time it runs, you can simply move the files outside that folder, restart Steam,  hit Install to have Steam start to download, then exit Steam, move files back, start Steam ... Steam will notice the files already exist and won't download them again and when you run the game first time, Steam will do the first installation steps as if the game is freshly installed.