New PC build - saving/migrating games data?

Scam · 29 Dec 2025 at 13:03

I'm staring at the new components for my lovely new 9800x3d and 5070ti build and getting everything prepared today on my existing (soon to be old) system.

New build will have a 1TB NVMe drive for OS, and a 2TB NVMe for games. My current/old machine has a 1TB SATA SSD games drive with all installs/data on. That SATA will be going into the new build as a general storage drive, which is helpful because I should be able to port everything over to my NVMe right?

So, what do I need to do to ensure I keep all my save games (and preferably make the game installs work without having to redownload everything)? Save games I care about currently are;

Rockstar Launcher:
Red Dead Redemption 2

Steam:
Counter Strike 2
Dirt Rally 2.0
Metro Last Light

EA:
Battlefield V

Epic:
GTAV

Thanks for any pointers, I'm guessing all of the launchers do things slightly differently

heatonpkmassive · 29 Dec 2025 at 13:24

Scam said:
I should be able to port everything over to my NVMe right?

You don't even need to do that, leave them where they are and just point Steam to the folder the games are in.

Scam · 29 Dec 2025 at 14:02

heatonpkmassive said:
You don't even need to do that, leave them where they are and just point Steam to the folder the games are in.

You mean (1) install new Steam instance on the new NVMe drive and then (2) point it to the SATA drive? I don't want to be gaming off the SATA drive.

heatonpkmassive · 29 Dec 2025 at 14:05

Scam said:
You mean (1) install new Steam instance on the new NVMe drive and then (2) point it to the SATA drive? I don't want to be gaming off the SATA drive.

You can copy to your NVME if you want, but real world difference in gaming between SATA and NVME is really not a lot if anything. if it were me, I'd leave where they are and use the space on your main drive for other stuff. Maybe games that use that direct storage on the fly loading could use the NVME, but unless you're doing very large file transfers, you'll probably not see a difference between the two.

Scam · 29 Dec 2025 at 15:18

heatonpkmassive said:
You can copy to your NVME if you want, but real world difference in gaming between SATA and NVME is really not a lot if anything. if it were me, I'd leave where they are and use the space on your main drive for other stuff. Maybe games that use that direct storage on the fly loading could use the NVME, but unless you're doing very large file transfers, you'll probably not see a difference between the two.

Well contrary to popular opinion nowadays I did buy an extra NVMe drive for games so I'd prefer to use it

To clarify on the new machine I'll have;
- 1TB NVMe for Windows, docs etc.
- 2TB NVMe for games
- 1TB SATA SSD for any other storage

heatonpkmassive · 29 Dec 2025 at 15:46

Scam said:
Well contrary to popular opinion nowadays I did buy an extra NVMe drive for games so I'd prefer to use it To clarify on the new machine I'll have;
- 1TB NVMe for Windows, docs etc.
- 2TB NVMe for games
- 1TB SATA SSD for any other storage

Just copy them to your drive of choice, then point Steam to those folders and you'll be good.

tamzzy · 29 Dec 2025 at 15:47

Scam said:
I'm staring at the new components for my lovely new 9800x3d and 5070ti build and getting everything prepared today on my existing (soon to be old) system.

woop woop finally!

heatonpkmassive · 29 Dec 2025 at 15:49

As an aside, I'd use your SATA drive for your documents if storing locally and obviously if these documents are important to you, also store them in the cloud or on a mechanical drive that is offline most or all of the time.

Scam · 29 Dec 2025 at 15:56

heatonpkmassive said:
Just copy them to your drive of choice, then point Steam to those folders and you'll be good.

Thanks. What about Epic, EA, Rockstar etc? Can you point them to your files?

heatonpkmassive said:
As an aside, I'd use your SATA drive for your documents if storing locally and obviously if these documents are important to you, also store them in the cloud or on a mechanical drive that is offline most or all of the time.

Yeah I have Google Drive and a used NAS I need to build. I don't even have that much "stuff" to hoard, I could probably duplicate docs across all 3 drives for redundancy for now lol

heatonpkmassive · 29 Dec 2025 at 17:50

Scam said:
Thanks. What about Epic, EA, Rockstar etc? Can you point them to your files?

Not sure on those, but I'm sure there will be some way to do that. Google Fu.

Quartz · 29 Dec 2025 at 18:03

Scam said:
I don't want to be gaming off the SATA drive.

If it's a SSD you won't notice the difference.

But

heatonpkmassive said:
Just copy them to your drive of choice, then point Steam to those folders and you'll be good.

This also applies. You should also copy over the \ProgramData folder and your Windows Profile (particularly the APPDATA folder).

Scam · 29 Dec 2025 at 19:21

Quartz said:
This also applies. You should also copy over the \ProgramData folder and your Windows Profile (particularly the APPDATA folder).

Argh I just unplugged my old machine and took out the SATA drive ready for building tomorrow!

Please tell me those folders are somewhere in the Program Files (games install) path, or in My Documents. Those are the two things I backed up

I'm guessing Steam saves game progress to the cloud right? I should be ok? I know Rockstar does.

Quartz · 29 Dec 2025 at 20:20

Scam said:
Argh I just unplugged my old machine and took out the SATA drive ready for building tomorrow!

Please tell me those folders are somewhere in the Program Files (games install) path, or in My Documents. Those are the two things I backed up I'm guessing Steam saves game progress to the cloud right? I should be ok? I know Rockstar does.

Nope. \Programdata is c:\Programdata and is hidden. and your profile is under c:\users\username. Copy them both to somewhere innocuous then transfer over the contents.