Transferred Storage

[Joe6]

So I just finished my new build and got everything installed that i needed on the boot drive like windows and drivers. After that was all done I went back and installed my older two drives another nvme ssd and my hard drive but most of my games are still showing I need to install when I know they’re on those drives. I managed to fix most of the steam games so they appear installed on the nvme but the hard drive still won’t. Any help is appreciated as I really don’t wanna redownload everything especially when it’s all already using the storage space.

[OhioYJ]

3 hours ago, Joe6 said:

 fix most of the steam games

For all Steam games it should just be a matter of pointing Steam back to the library folder on each drive, Steam will see the game, and it is "installed".

 

If it is a fresh Windows install Steam will download the necessary Windows components needed to run on the first launch, but no game files.

[Joe6]

7 hours ago, OhioYJ said:

For all Steam games it should just be a matter of pointing Steam back to the library folder on each drive, Steam will see the game, and it is "installed".

 

If it is a fresh Windows install Steam will download the necessary Windows components needed to run on the first launch, but no game files.

What do I need to do for this? I know I went into steam settings and storage and added the two drives to the list there and that is what brought back I believe all the nvme games to my downloaded on steam but nothing seems to show downloaded from the hard drive. I especially see it as it shows I have nothing downloaded on epic games when they are all on those two drives.

[OhioYJ]

3 hours ago, Joe6 said:

What do I need to do for this? I know I went into steam settings and storage and added the two drives to the list there and that is what brought back I believe all the nvme games to my downloaded on steam but nothing seems to show downloaded from the hard drive.

In Steam it's in Settings and Library going from memory. When I get home I can double check if you still don't find it. 

 

3 hours ago, Joe6 said:

 I especially see it as it shows I have nothing downloaded on epic games when they are all on those two drives.

Epic doesn't allow this. (I'll keep my opinions on Epic to myself.)  Supposedly there are some hacky ways around this, but in general with Epic you're screwed, and are forced to redownload everything.  

 

I've never redownloaded stuff from Steam, I keep it all locally. It's definitely a nice feature. 

[Joe6]

1 hour ago, OhioYJ said:

In Steam it's in Settings and Library going from memory. When I get home I can double check if you still don't find it. 

I've found all my games and where they are located on my hard drive but I cant get steam to recognize that folder as the games and even tried moving it into the folder steam created but that did nothing. im not sure if its maybe i need to rename it or something or what exactly I need to do now but i do now know which folder they are all located in

[OhioYJ]

1 hour ago, Joe6 said:

I've found all my games and where they are located on my hard drive but I cant get steam to recognize that folder as the games and even tried moving it into the folder steam created but that did nothing. im not sure if its maybe i need to rename it or something or what exactly I need to do now but i do now know which folder they are all located in

You shouldn't need to rename or move anything. I just got home, and checked. I was wrong, it's not libary, it's storage. Settings --> Storage. Under storage you can use the drop down arrow and choose add drive.

 

For example, I've added D:\SteamLibrary (My Data Drive and Storage location for all my SteamGames). I've also changed this to the default install location.  It should then list all the games installed in that folder location below.

[Joe6]

1 hour ago, OhioYJ said:

You shouldn't need to rename or move anything. I just got home, and checked. I was wrong, it's not libary, it's storage. Settings --> Storage. Under storage you can use the drop down arrow and choose add drive.

 

For example, I've added D:\SteamLibrary (My Data Drive and Storage location for all my SteamGames). I've also changed this to the default install location.  It should then list all the games installed in that folder location below.

Ive done that and it worked to bring all my games that were on my ssd but the hard drive all the games are in a folder holding games from both steam and epic games and is called "games" and whenever I add storage on steam it adds the hard drive but wont recognize the game and data on the drive and basically says there is no data related to steam and therefore showing no games are downloaded. Ive tried selecting that folder as the new drive but it literly does nothing and just show the same nothing related to steam.

[OhioYJ]

1 minute ago, Joe6 said:

holding games from both steam and epic games and is called "games"

I'm blindly assuming it's Epic's fault (but that's probably not fair)... but what's the folder structure like in there.

 

I'm guessing you have inside that games folder a steamapps folder (as well as libraryfolder.vdf, and steam.dll files)?

[Joe6]

3 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

I'm blindly assuming it's Epic's fault (but that's probably not fair)... but what's the folder structure like in there.

 

I'm guessing you have inside that games folder a steamapps folder (as well as libraryfolder.vdf, and steam.dll files)?

yes it has a steamapps folder and some other steam named ones that are empty but the steamapps folder has all the games and a bunch of other folders inside of it 

[Joe6]

Also in the game folder it does have a bunch more single files like some .dll but not many of them actually say steam anywhere in the names

[OhioYJ]

4 minutes ago, Joe6 said:

Also in the game folder it does have a bunch more single files like some .dll but not many of them actually say steam anywhere in the names

Ok, I don't have have Epic Games at all, but my son uses it for a few things. His folder doesn't have any extra .dll files in it. So I don't know what those are from. I have a pretty large Steam library and my folder and my folder is pretty clean. However I wouldn't delete anything. You could try temporarily moving that steamapps folder into a new location on that same drive, and see if that helps (However I'd be more tempted to try and single game, just recreate the folder structure, and see if it works then, before moving everything).

 

So unless you logged into a different account or something? It will only show games that you have a license for (Just having the files isn't enough)

 

It should just work. I've gone through many builds, reinstall windows, reinstall steam, point it to the new drive. On top of that any time I upgrade hard drives, I copy the files to the new drive, point steam to the new location, everything is good to go. I've done this just a few times (I started with a 14 TB drive):

 

[Joe6]

4 minutes ago, OhioYJ said:

Ok, I don't have have Epic Games at all, but my son uses it for a few things. His folder doesn't have any extra .dll files in it. So I don't know what those are from. I have a pretty large Steam library and my folder and my folder is pretty clean. However I wouldn't delete anything. You could try temporarily moving that steamapps folder into a new location on that same drive, and see if that helps (However I'd be more tempted to try and single game, just recreate the folder structure, and see if it works then, before moving everything).

 

So unless you logged into a different account or something? It will only show games that you have a license for (Just having the files isn't enough)

Im honestly not worried about the epic games i got most of them to work and really don't use them that much but I care way more about the steam games that I can reinstall but when i can open the folders and clearly see they are saved on the hard drive i obviously don't want to reinstall and use more space. I was thinking about trying to move everything not steam related and try that way but still feel like it won't do anything as selecting the whole folder shouldve allowed it to see everything is there. I tried moving the steamapps folder into the steamlibrary folder it kept trying to make but then it would make another steamapps folder and still show nothing but storage being used but steam supposedly having nothing to do with it.

[Joe6]

I finally got it to work ended up moving everything I knew wasn't apart of steam, deleting the steamlibrary folder it kept creating, and then renaming my folder with the games to SteamLibrary and after that steam had forgotten about the drive, went and selected add drive but instead of hitting my drive right away hit "choose another location (this was the first time that option appeared) and then chose the newly named SteamLibrary and everything appeared downloaded. Now I just have to figure out how to get all my desktop icons to show an actual image and not just globes or a white paper.