Steam Games Drive

[penguin2424]

Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering if it would be possible to download all my games from my steam library to a hard drive and hot-swap this drive drive between different computers. If this is possible would there be any extra steps I would have to take?

I'm wondering this because sometimes I switch locations for long periods of time and i would like to not have to download the games on one PC and then have to do it again once I move. 

 

Thanks

[porina]

There is a guide somewhere out there describing how to move steam game installs that should work in this situation. 

 

Found it: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

 

I used this before when moving from one PC to another, but if you have a fast enough external I can't see why this wouldn't work also.

[penguin2424]

9 minutes ago, porina said:

There is a guide somewhere out there describing how to move steam game installs that should work in this situation. 

 

Found it: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

 

I used this before when moving from one PC to another, but if you have a fast enough external I can't see why this wouldn't work also.

Thanks, this looks like a good guide but it doesn't mention anything about swapping it between computers. Do you thing this method would still work for that?

[Windows7ge]

13 minutes ago, penguin2424 said:

Hi everyone,

 

I was wondering if it would be possible to download all my games from my steam library to a hard drive and hot-swap this drive drive between different computers. If this is possible would there be any extra steps I would have to take?

I'm wondering this because sometimes I switch locations for long periods of time and i would like to not have to download the games on one PC and then have to do it again once I move. 

 

Thanks

Provided you're running windows and you left the games to their default directories you can make a copy of these two directories and put them somewhere.

C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps

C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/userdata

 

steamapps is the folder that contains all of your downloaded saved games

userdata is the folder that contains all of your save files (whatever progress you make in the games you've played)

 

Replacing these two files in a new steam installation on a new computer will minimize how much data will have to be downloaded to get you back up and running.

[penguin2424]

1 minute ago, Windows7ge said:

Provided you're running windows and you left the games to their default directories you can make a copy of these two directories and put them somewhere.

C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps

C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/userdata

 

steamapps is the folder that contains all of your downloaded saved games

userdata is the folder that contains all of your save files (whatever progress you make in the games you've played)

 

Replacing these two files in a new steam installation on a new computer will minimize how much data will have to be downloaded to get you back up and running.

I'll try this out, thanks

[DrM]

if youre physically moving the drive, then just go to steam settings and add a new library folder where your games are installed. its should automatically detect them and add it to steam.

 

Quote

If you are moving your Steam installation to a new hard drive and want to keep game saves/profiles for third party games that are not saved on Steam Cloud most of these can be found in your Documents folder: ~\Documents\[username]\My Games\.