"Backing up" Steam and Origin games...

Havana_UK · 6 Sep 2012 at 14:58

Folks, tomorrow I will likely be rebuilding my PC because I'm moving from HDD to SSD as the primary drive.

In order to save myself the hassle of re-downloading about 30GB worth of Origin (BF3) and Steam (various) games, is there any way to back the games up so I can effectlvely copy them to the SSD once it's installed?

Thanks in advance!

FrenchTart · 6 Sep 2012 at 15:01

Just copy the entire steam directory. You don't need to do any more than that.

Havana_UK · 6 Sep 2012 at 15:51

FrenchTart said:
Just copy the entire steam directory. You don't need to do any more than that.

Great, I hoped it woudl be that simple. Thanks for the confirmation.

Do you know if Origin (i.e. BF3) is as simple?

FrenchTart · 6 Sep 2012 at 15:52

Sadly not :/

With Origin I ended up having to reinstall though I believe you can backup some of the installer files and then pause your reinstall download, close Origin, and overwrite the files that were downloading. Someone that has used Origin more may be able to advise you better on this though.

ak22 · 6 Sep 2012 at 16:03

I reformatted my pc not long ago I just copied the "Battlefield 3" although I lost my single player saved file.

Witcher1979 · 6 Sep 2012 at 16:08

ak22 said:
I reformatted my pc not long ago I just copied the "Battlefield 3" although I lost my single player saved file.

I think the saves are stored in your documents folder somewhere.

kitch9 · 6 Sep 2012 at 16:08

Havana_UK said:
Great, I hoped it woudl be that simple. Thanks for the confirmation.

Do you know if Origin (i.e. BF3) is as simple?

Yeah just copy the game file over to a new install of Origin in the correct place, Origin should figure it out.

Havana_UK · 6 Sep 2012 at 16:11

Thanks for the replies guys. All sounds as simple as I hoped it would be!

Cliste · 6 Sep 2012 at 17:03

Regarding Origin and what FrenchTart said above, copy the folder files.
On your new machine, begin the game downloads (1 at a time preferably). Close Origin and pause the download, now copy the old files into the new game folder and overwrite etc.
Open up Origin again and continue the download, where you'll only have to download a couple of MBs.

robj20 · 6 Sep 2012 at 17:11

When doing steam its just the steamapps folder, but dont forget to copy the ones in Current User/My Document/My Games, some saves are found here.

MartynB85 · 6 Sep 2012 at 17:59

I've copied Origin games to other hard drives a few times, just copy the origin games folder over, its in program files. With bf3 i had to right click the game in my library and click repair, i also had to install punkbuster so you may have to also if one of your games is bf3.

GoblinKingUK · 6 Sep 2012 at 20:39

Steam has its own game back-up feature anyway - just right click on any game, select 'backup game files', tick the games you wanna backup, choose where you want it and how big each file is (it spilts it so you can copy onto discs or whatever you want) and Steam does the rest.

FrenchTart · 6 Sep 2012 at 20:40

GoblinKingUK said:
Steam has its own game back-up feature anyway - just right click on any game, select 'backup game files', tick the games you wanna backup, choose where you want it and how big each file is (it spilts it so you can copy onto discs or whatever you want) and Steam does the rest.

Quite a lot easier to just copy the entire steam folder unless space is a big issue though.

GoblinKingUK · 6 Sep 2012 at 20:42

FrenchTart said:
Quite a lot easier to just copy the entire steam folder unless space is a big issue though.

well just saying. . .

thats how I backup all my steam games onto a large backup drive, just keeps it tidy.

Five.Stars · 6 Sep 2012 at 20:47

The folders you want to copy are:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common

and

C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games

d_brennen · 6 Sep 2012 at 20:53

GoblinKingUK said:
Steam has its own game back-up feature anyway - just right click on any game, select 'backup game files', tick the games you wanna backup, choose where you want it and how big each file is (it spilts it so you can copy onto discs or whatever you want) and Steam does the rest.

FrenchTart said:
Quite a lot easier to just copy the entire steam folder unless space is a big issue though.

I found the Steam feature very slow VS just copying the folder

GoblinKingUK · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:00

d_brennen said:
I found the Steam feature very slow VS just copying the folder

Thats because it uses compression and not just copys

d_brennen · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:01

Ah didn't know that, space isn't really an issue to me

Bloomfield · 6 Sep 2012 at 21:32

Five.Stars said:
The folders you want to copy are:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common

I have 36GB of stuff in my Steam folder that isn't in there

.

orderoftheflame · 6 Sep 2012 at 22:01

Five.Stars said:
The folders you want to copy are:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common

You want the SteamApps folder, not just the common one. Otherwise you'll miss a lot of the early valve games and shared source files (+ other old games).