How to clone hard drive with steam?

[Pooherino ツ]

So I have a 1tb seagate hdd right now. Im planning to switch to 3tb and I have steam install on my ssd and most of the games on the hdd. if i clone the 1tb hdd, would it work with all the games? would it look just like I never replace anything?

[viliuks]

So I have a 1tb seagate hdd right now. Im planning to switch to 3tb and I have steam install on my ssd and most of the games on the hdd. if i clone the 1tb hdd, would it work with all the games? would it look just like I never replace anything?

I think steam will think nothing has changed. Except make sure it has the same drive name, because it might make some things broken.

EDIT: AFAIK you can't clone a hard drive with steam, you will have to install windows or other operating system to do that. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[zzenigmaxzz]

as long as you actually clone it yes, dont just drag and drop

 

you will need to extend the partition once its done and then make sure you make the drive name and letter the same

[noisebomb44]

Also, make sure that your MAIN steam folder is placed on your SSD, this will help with bootup, and DONT place your steam folder inside the "programs (x86)" folder, this can cause problems when having steam games installed onto two different drives, instead do it like this : C:\steam (not C:\program (x86)\steam)

[Pooherino ツ]

Also, make sure that your MAIN steam folder is placed on your SSD, this will help with bootup, and DONT place your steam folder inside the "programs (x86)" folder, this can cause problems when having steam games installed onto two different drives, instead do it like this : C:\steam (not C:\program (x86)\steam)

well its already in the C:\program (x86)\steam folder so lol. Idk how to move it

[noisebomb44]

well its already in the C:\program (x86)\steam folder so lol. Idk how to move it

try to do it without moving the main steam folder, it might have just been because i had windows 7 at the time

although when you install it on the other drive, install the steam folder onto "D:\steam"

[Captain_WD]

So I have a 1tb seagate hdd right now. Im planning to switch to 3tb and I have steam install on my ssd and most of the games on the hdd. if i clone the 1tb hdd, would it work with all the games? would it look just like I never replace anything?

 

Hey there Pooherino,

 

The cloning process creates an identical copy of the first drive onto the second one bit by bit. The system shouldn't tell the difference once you've swapped the two drives and the remaining 2TB of space should be indicates as "Unallocated" in the Disk Management. Do check if the 1TB HDD is formatted as MBR or GPT as if you clone it on a 3TB drive and it's configured in MBR, you won't be able to use the full 3TB storage space of the targer drive as MBR is limited to 2.2TB and you would have to reformat the drive in order to convert it to GPT. 

Other than that you shouldn't have problems.

 

Captain_WD.