Steam Game Transfer - Reimaging

Kidge

Kidge

Kidge

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Joined
13 Sep 2012
Posts
869
Hi All,

I'm just wondering whether there is a way that i could transfer the games ive downloaded from steam which are currently on my SSD to my HDD so I don't have to download them again when I put a fresh windows image on my SSD.

I have 4 games currently which I believe are almost 10Gb each which as you can imagine takes a while to download at a supposedly 10Mb connection. This will also free up some space on my SSD as its getting full and i don't really need all the games on at same time.

Ive found the program file so im wondering is it as simple as just copying it from the SSD to HDD or are ther complications?
 
Go into the Steam directory, and copy the whole "steamapps" folder to your HDD. When you've formatted just reinstall Steam and copy the steamapps folder from your HDD back to your SSD and overwrite the empty one from the new install. Done it a few times (before I made a symbolic link) and there were no complications.
 
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Ah nice thank you for that!

Would this be the same principle if I only want one game im playing currently on my SSD and the rest on my HDD?
 
Kidge said:
Ah nice thank you for that!

Would this be the same principle if I only want one game im playing currently on my SSD and the rest on my HDD?
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Yeah you can do that also, just gets a little more tricky as (if you look inside the steamapps folder) you'll have to make sure you copy the right directory and possibly an associating ncf file or two. It's not too bad though, since the ncf's are small and the majority of your games will be in /steamapps/common/ you could copy the whole of steamapps back to your newly created empty one on your SSD then make a new "common" folder and just drag a game over that you wanted.
 
Or use Steammover for managing the games.

One thing to do when you do move to a new OS is take ownership of the Steam folder, only just discovered this the other night due to a game not launching correctly though all the others have worked fine otherwise.
 
I think steam changed the way it worked recently so that you can just copy the game folder into the new common folder within steam dir then choose install. It should then say something about discovering already installed files and normally a tiny update at the end.

If you install the steam beta update you can install games to different drives. Not tried it myself - keep all my games on the slow mechanical drive atm :p
 
stooeh said:
I think steam changed the way it worked recently so that you can just copy the game folder into the new common folder within steam dir then choose install. It should then say something about discovering already installed files and normally a tiny update at the end.
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That's the way its always worked.

However since Windows 7, sometimes there are file permissions issues, so you might have to Take Ownership on the folder as described earlier.
 
I just copy my entire steam directory. No need to mess around with individual folders or reinstalling.

In fact, when I say copy I actually mean "leave the steam folder on the hard drive that it has been on for several years".

I do use "take ownership" though.
 
FrenchTart said:
I just copy my entire steam directory. No need to mess around with individual folders or reinstalling.
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This. My current steam folder has been copied (in it's entirety) at least 10 times through different HD's and Windows reinstalls.

Sometimes I have to delete the .blob files in the root steam folder to allow it to update properly. This is inconsistent though.
 
Cool, thanks for all the help guys.

I'll be installing my new PSU and GFX this weekend so thought I'd just as well put a fresh install on too.

Once completed I think I'll play Sleeping Dogs or Dirt, haven't checked if they're multiplayer yet (surely Dirt is?) but does anyone fancy a game?
 
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