Moving a hdd with Steam on

Uther · 17 Oct 2015 at 18:44

Having just built a new computer for my son, I need to move his steam games to it. I was planning on moving his old hdd to the new build as a games drive. Will there be any issues with Steam if I do this?
Any steps I have to take first? He has a few saved games, can I just copy/paste this to the new c drive?

SonniLombardi · 17 Oct 2015 at 18:48

Just copy the Steamapps folder in your Steam folder ("C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps) to another location (other HDD)

Then copy it back over once you installed and updated Steam on the new machine.

mark43 · 17 Oct 2015 at 20:24

Just to add to that, there is no need to copy them to the same folder or drive on the new PC. Just add a Library in steam and select the folder you have them in, it should then find all the games.

Disco_P · 17 Oct 2015 at 20:28

I'd fresh install steam then overwrite the new install with the old data so that the registry knows what is going on.

mark43 said:
Just to add to that, there is no need to copy them to the same folder or drive on the new PC. Just add a Library in steam and select the folder you have them in, it should then find all the games.

This is complicated as steam requires a new library folder to be empty.

NoobCannon · 17 Oct 2015 at 20:31

Rename current steamspps folder.

Move hard drive

Install steam

Copy renamed folder contents to newly created steamapps folder

Drink jack daniels.

mark43 · 17 Oct 2015 at 21:03

Disco_P said:
This is complicated as steam requires a new library folder to be empty.

Pretty sure it doesn't, having done this last week.

I had all my games on a second HDD. Did a fresh install of windows on my primary drive, installed steam on that drive, and then added a library with the location of the games on my second HDD, and it quickly found all those games and showed them as installed on steam.