How do I transfer my steam games from one computer to another without downloading.

[Hogger]

I bought a laptop the other day and It is arriving today. I'm 95% of the way through my internet data and I want to install a good portion of my steam library (304gb of games). can I copy the games over to my 1tb external hard drive, load them onto my laptop, then have steam recognize them and accept them? that would be a lot better than going over my data, or going to the library for slow internet.

[3rrant]

2 minutes ago, Hogger said:

I bought a laptop the other day and It is arriving today. I'm 95% of the way through my internet data and I want to install a good portion of my steam library (304gb of games). can I copy the games over to my 1tb external hard drive, load them onto my laptop, then have steam recognize them and accept them? that would be a lot better than going over my data, or going to the library for slow internet.

Use steam backup

 

But you will probably have to stil download a small portion of files

[comicsansms]

Copy your steam apps folder and move it to the other computer

[Mikkeli222]

Have a look at this Steam support how-to: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

 

[rn8686]

Buy a large USB or portable HD and use steam mover. 

[Oryzaki]

27 minutes ago, Hogger said:

I bought a laptop the other day and It is arriving today. I'm 95% of the way through my internet data and I want to install a good portion of my steam library (304gb of games). can I copy the games over to my 1tb external hard drive, load them onto my laptop, then have steam recognize them and accept them? that would be a lot better than going over my data, or going to the library for slow internet.

It should work if you make a steam library using the settings tab and move the games over to that folder. It should be YOURDRIVELABLEHERE:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common

[TrigrH]

you can just copy ur entire steam folder the only catch is you have to run steam as admin on the new system

[IAmBedrock]

 1.  Copy your steam common folder  YOURDRIVELABLEHERE:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common  to your external HDD

 2. Download and install steam on new PC.  

 3. Make a folder somewhere on new PC called SteamLibrary. 

 3. In steam go to top left hand corner click Steam then in the drop down click settings

 4. Click the Downloads Tab the up the top click Steam Library Folders

 5. Click Add Library Folder 

 6. Browse to the folder you made called SteamLibrary  click on it and click select in the bottom right hand corner of the popup

This will add that folder to the Game installations.

 

 7. Once you have done that go and copy your Games from External HDD to your new folder. 

8. Restart steam. Games should appear in your library