need quick help moving steam files before reinstall

bigjimmyauk · 11 Dec 2011 at 20:53

just about to do a reinstall but forgot i have 4 steam games i would like to play possibly tonight.

how do i save them to my other backup drive so when i'm reinstalled i can juust swap the file over

Joop · 11 Dec 2011 at 20:55

copy + paste ur steamapps folder

bigjimmyauk · 11 Dec 2011 at 21:03

Joop said:
copy + paste ur steamapps folder

thats nearly 200 gig my temp backup drive only has 80 gig free, any way around it?

MOOGLEYS · 11 Dec 2011 at 21:07

If you go to the games in steam you can right click and delete local data on the ones you don't wan't and then copy and paste the steam folder to the other drive.

orderoftheflame · 11 Dec 2011 at 21:08

bigjimmyauk said:
thats nearly 200 gig my temp backup drive only has 80 gig free, any way around it?

Well, you could compress your Steam folder. I'd be amazed if you got 200gb down to 80 though. It's all got to go somewhere. :confused:

You could get the Steam backup utility to split your games into DVD sized chunks, but that's a lot of disks for 200gb..

bigjimmyauk · 11 Dec 2011 at 21:14

orderoftheflame said:
Well, you could compress your Steam folder. I'd be amazed if you got 200gb down to 80 though. It's all got to go somewhere.

You could get the Steam backup utility to split your games into DVD sized chunks, but that's a lot of disks for 200gb..

I THINK MOOGLEYS WAY SEEMS OK ,

a lot of them i don't play at the minute just i wated to avoid downloading the main four i play.

P:S sorry for caps

sagum · 11 Dec 2011 at 22:03

I know it might not be much help now but a little tip that might help in the future.

This is what I do.

I have a seperate 'backup' harddisk (could be partition) that I create a directory junction to the steam folder location, pointing to the backup drive.

As admin at the cmd prompt do:

mklink /j G:\Steam\ C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\

You might want to move your steam folder to G:\Steam before so its empty. Windows will complain otherwise.
Then as far as steam and any other programs are concerned, your g:\steam\ IS where all your steam files are coming from.
So you can format your machine very easy next time and just re-create the directory junction and you're ok to go stright away.

I do this with several folders and it makes life much easier. Don't forget you can also use mount points to mount a drive (such as the G backup drve) as a folder within another drive, such as pointing G:\ to C:\The-G-Drive\