quick steam / format question

[GJ02]

what happens with regards to formating the hd and steam downloaded games?
how do i get them back ?
is it as simple as re downloading them via steam ?
just about to format and then remembered i needed to ask this
theres always something i forget to do before a format. i once forgot to backup all my wifes work folder

 

[m4cc45]

You can backup the games from within steam if you don't want to download several GB of information or re-download them with Steam.

There is a backup option in the Steam menus somewhere or you can just keep a copy of the folder, reinstall Steam and the copy the contents back over.


M.

 

[4T5]

I installed them Fresh on this system when I built it up, Steam takes good advantage of your connection & downloading takes no time at all. Think it was set up this way so that you can download your games onto any system you have use of.
Damn handy if you ask me, Steam roxs.

 

[PhillyDee]

I back mine up whenever I buy a new game. The backup itself is now 14.6Gb big. It doesnt same your settings, but it does save the equivalent of all the installers for the game.

 

[bledd]

no need to use the inbuilt backup


just copy your steam dir to another drive, copy steam dir back to the new drive
then download the steam installer on the new build and point it at the dir


works 100% fine, i do this all the time

you may not even need to download the installer, i think just running steam.exe invokes the installer

basically, steam is portable

 

[HeX]

no need to use the inbuilt backup


just copy your steam dir to another drive, copy steam dir back to the new drive
then download the steam installer on the new build and point it at the dir


works 100% fine, i do this all the time

you may not even need to download the installer, i think just running steam.exe invokes the installer

basically, steam is portable

Yup I do this, i've never redownloaded anything, just sidecopy the steam folder to a different partition/drive and run it from there once you've got your OS up and running again.

 

[platypus]

I installed them Fresh on this system when I built it up, Steam takes good advantage of your connection & downloading takes no time at all. Think it was set up this way so that you can download your games onto any system you have use of.
Damn handy if you ask me, Steam roxs.

Such a pain if you have a lot of large games/pants connection though!

 

[bledd]

i once forgot to backup all my wifes work folder

don't you make weekly backups anyway?

what if your hard drive just dies?


robocopy /e c:\source d:\destination

create a bat file of the above
run that weekly and it'll copy all new and updated folders to destination..


if you're on xp, you'll need to drop this into c:\windows\system32 before hand

http://bleddyn.co.uk/help/1files/ROBOCOPY.EXE

 

[GJ02]

thanks guys !

 

[LoadsaMoney]

I just copy the SteamApps folder (and any others that have games in) over to another drive, then once i format and reinstall Steam, copy it back.

 

[uv]

you may not even need to download the installer, i think just running steam.exe invokes the installer

yup. on a fresh install, running Steam.exe (I keep Steam on a seperate drive) just re-installs the Steam service - then you're good to go

 

[bledd]

loadsa, might as well copy the lot, to retain most of your settings