How do i move steam games

[mjs warlord]

My second ssd drive that i use to store games is getting full so i plan to get this.

Amazon.co.uk : WD 4 TB My Passport Portable Hard Drive with Password Protection and Auto Backup Software - Black

I am choosing an external one as i dont want to start messing around inside my case.

How do i move all my steam games to another drive , do i just right click the folder named Steam and the cut paste it to another drive.

 

[ZedClampet]

My second ssd drive that i use to store games is getting full so i plan to get this.

Amazon.co.uk : WD 4 TB My Passport Portable Hard Drive with Password Protection and Auto Backup Software - Black

I am choosing an external one as i dont want to start messing around inside my case.

How do i move all my steam games to another drive , do i just right click the folder named Steam and the cut paste it to another drive.

If you right click on the game name and select "properties" then "Local Files", I think it's the last option under local files. Can't remember what it's called and don't have Steam on this computer. It's something like "Move Installation Folder". Just click on that and tell it where to move the game.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Steam/Steamapps/common/ is where all the game folders are.

I just cut and paste the folders from there to my HDD, and then uninstall from inside Steam. When you want to play them again, you can cut and paste the other way, and then just select the game and install it from within Steam.

It will discover the files that are already there and download any new patches and install them

There probably a way to do it 'properly' from within Steam by now, but I still do it that way because it works fine.

 

[Zloth]

If you right click on the game name and select "properties" then "Local Files", I think it's the last option under local files. Can't remember what it's called and don't have Steam on this computer. It's something like "Move Installation Folder". Just click on that and tell it where to move the game.

Exactly right! "Move installation folder..." (the ... means the program is going to ask you something more before it does anything)

 

[Brian Boru]

I still do it that way because it works fine

Brilliant!

Fyi here's the official method:
Moving a Steam Installation and Games

Steam Support :: Moving a Steam Installation and Games

help.steampowered.com

I am choosing an external

Note the warning on the page above:
"It is not recommended that you install Steam to an external hard drive, due to potential performance issues."
For this reason, sounds like Kaamos's method is best.

 

[ZedClampet]

Brilliant!

Fyi here's the official method:
Moving a Steam Installation and Games

Steam Support :: Moving a Steam Installation and Games

help.steampowered.com

Note the warning on the page above:
"It is not recommended that you install Steam to an external hard drive, due to potential performance issues."
For this reason, sounds like Kaamos's method is best.

He asked how to move his already installed games, not how to set a new folder for his installations. And he's not moving Steam to an external drive, just the games. To move the games, the best way is definitely not cutting and pasting lol

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Looks like you can 'backup and restore' games by the method you're talking about @ZedClampet, which would work better than cutting and pasting as its seems to compress them a bit.

My one question would be how long does it take to compress a 50-100GB game and decompress it vs copy pasting? Obviously thats also going to depend on the drives in question too.

I'm already stuck with 1.5 TB of installs and I don't think I'll spend the time to back them up officially for a while at least