Backing up Steam games

shinester184 · 6 Dec 2009 at 16:24

Hi there,

I am currently about to start building a friend a new system, and we need to know if he should use the Steam back-up Wizard to back-up his Steam games onto an external HDD?

Or when you log onto your Steam account on another PC, will the games just be under 'not installed' and its just a matter of downloading and installing them?

Cheers.

PGdude · 6 Dec 2009 at 16:32

You can just re-download them, but backing up is quicker solution. I did come across a few problems, but go ahead.

Evilsod · 6 Dec 2009 at 16:32

I wouldn't advise using the Steam Backup thing. Its prone to crashing when you come to re-run it. Did so for mine and some searching found a lot of people had the same problem if the file is too big.

Easiest method is to just copy the entire Steam and Steamapps folders to the external HDD, then copy them back to the same place when you get the new system up and running. They'll run fine through the new Steam as if nothing ever happened. I did this too as the backup failed and i found the Steam file in the windows.old folder, lucky for me...

Digital · 6 Dec 2009 at 16:36

I usually just copy the steamapps folder from the steam folder. Reinstall steam on the new PC, then shutdown steam and copy the steamapps folder back into the steam folder and restart steam.

shinester184 · 6 Dec 2009 at 16:45

Digital said:
I usually just copy the steamapps folder from the steam folder. Reinstall steam on the new PC, then shutdown steam and copy the steamapps folder back into the steam folder and restart steam.

And job done?

Rroff · 6 Dec 2009 at 16:58

Be aware that some non-valve games may write data to appdata, "my documents" and "my document\my games" as well - usually under the developer, publisher or game name.

shinester184 · 6 Dec 2009 at 17:10

Rroff said:
Be aware that some non-valve games may write data to appdata, "my documents" and "my document\my games" as well - usually under the developer, publisher or game name.

If well if so, he'll have to re-download those games which isn't too much fuss when left over night.

Broken Hope · 6 Dec 2009 at 17:11

shinester184 said:
If well if so, he'll have to re-download those games which isn't too much fuss when left over night.

It's usually save games that are saved there, I'm sure he won't be too happy if he loses all his progress in his non valve games.

Antar Bolaeisk · 6 Dec 2009 at 17:17

If you're building a new PC order a second (large) hard-drive, install it into the old PC first and copy steam over onto that.

When you've the new PC built just fire that drive into the new PC and you should be mostly okay. Of course, you may need to find a few stashed away save files and the like first.

Never had any problems myself this way and my Steam install has been through four different operating systems now at this stage.

(of course, this method assumes the old PC supports SATA)

jas72 · 7 Dec 2009 at 10:29

just installed win7 last night and copied the

common folder, media and the files from steamapp.

Took some time 45GB

When I booted up the games they all had to do something either download some updates or install something (think mostly due to Win7) Microsoft CC+2005 or something like that COD4 had to install punkbuster again so dunno where that's stored but all good after a few restarts.

I didn't have many saved games so didn't check.

Might be worth checking your local docs on the old HD first thought as quite a few games store info there.

But I found the whole thing didn't take more than 20mins which is great since I have only 30GB bandwidth per month