Format HDD without deleting a folder

Dark Light · 22 Apr 2015 at 23:20

I have two SSDs in RAID. it might be a long shot, but is it possible to format the drives without deleting Steam or maybe a way to restore it later, as I don't want to put unnecessary write cycles on the drive.

Andre · 23 Apr 2015 at 05:46

You could look at doing a free space zero?
Why exactly do you want to format them?

Dark Light · 24 Apr 2015 at 05:35

Andre said:
You could look at doing a free space zero?
Why exactly do you want to format them?

Just to reinstall Windows.

ED209 · 24 Apr 2015 at 08:31

the steamapps folder can be backed up before re installing windows and then copied back over and add the folder back in to steam.

I have all my steam games installed and the steamapps folder backed up to a external hard drive so if I do format I just dump it back in to the same location as before once steam installed.

snips86x · 24 Apr 2015 at 08:40

ED209 said:
the steamapps folder can be backed up before re installing windows and then copied back over and add the folder back in to steam.

I have all my steam games installed and the steamapps folder backed up to a external hard drive so if I do format I just dump it back in to the same location as before once steam installed.

Same process used here. I've backed up my steam & origin directory onto my NAS.

Cat_J · 24 Apr 2015 at 13:48

He said to avoid writes so backup isn't an option.

The best way I can see is to erase all the other data on the drive then shrink the partition to only include the steam data, create a new partition and install to that then just use steam as if its on another drive.

You would need another PC or some bootable software to do this.

bledd · 24 Apr 2015 at 14:43

I wouldn't worry about number of writes, you'll buy new SSDs before these fail.

/optimist

bledd · 24 Apr 2015 at 14:48

Personally, I've got an SSD just for Steam, I mark it as the S drive

bledd. said:
If anyone else wants to set a steam drive icon, download these and put them in the root of your Steam hard drive.

autorun.inf
steam.ico

You can set them as hidden files.

Need to reboot for it to take effect

Looks neat in Explorer

ED209 · 24 Apr 2015 at 15:33

bledd. said:
Personally, I've got an SSD just for Steam, I mark it as the S drive

Looks neat in Explorer

exactly the same as me lol also like that icon better than that new one they are using!

kaku · 24 Apr 2015 at 15:40

I honestly think you'd 'waste' more writes faffing about trying different solutions than if you just reformatted or whatever.

I wouldn't worry too much about it personally.

KIA · 24 Apr 2015 at 19:14

bledd. said:
I wouldn't worry about number of writes, you'll buy new SSDs before these fail.

/optimist

This.