Best way to back up Steam games?

liamcrane · 15 Sep 2011 at 21:02

Evening all

Im just curious to know the best way to backup my Steam collection to save having to re download all my games. Im think of formatting my machine sometime soon and it could take a while to re download a lot of games on my 2mb connection

.

Can i just copy my Steam apps folder to an external drive or is there other files i would need to go with it?

Many thanks

orderoftheflame · 15 Sep 2011 at 21:04

liamcrane said:
just copy my Steam apps folder to an external drive

Job done.

You could use the built in backup utility... but it's a lot of faff for nothing imo. Just Ctrl C + V it.

liamcrane · 15 Sep 2011 at 21:11

Sweet thanks very much for that!

ak22 · 15 Sep 2011 at 21:17

I did it few days ago I deleted everything in my steam folder apart form "steamapps" "userdata" and steam.exe copy the steam folder and your done.

liamcrane · 15 Sep 2011 at 21:19

Great thanks so much, where does steam tend to stick your saved games? Is it the app data folder in documents and settings?

orderoftheflame · 15 Sep 2011 at 21:22

liamcrane said:
Great thanks so much, where does steam tend to stick your saved games? Is it the app data folder in documents and settings?

All over the place unfortunately. Steam doesn't control save games (apart from SteamCloud ones obviously). It's entirely dependant on where the games developer decided they should go.

I'd use something like GameSave Manager to find as many as possible and back them up with the least amount of effort.

http://www.gamesave-manager.com/

liamcrane · 15 Sep 2011 at 21:25

Cool cheers for that mate will definatly give that a whirl for sure