Reinsert Steam Game Install Files on C Drive

[nomdeplume]

Ran out of space on my devoted game drive for installs. Which contains all of my save files etc and is set as the de facto Steam install location. A single approximately 200GB install found semi-permanent place on 1TB NVMe OS drive. Before continuing with what I believe to be a solid order of operation allowing reinstallation of W11 and avoids a large download. Just want to confirm with those having success with installs spread across numerous drives the safest and most efficient procedure in this situation.

1. Copy entire Steam folder in x86 Programs to external drive - Install W11/Steam - Copy install back to exact same location on C drive
2. Mount SATA HDD and direct Steam to move install to it - Install W11/Steam - Direct Steam to move install back to original location on C drive


Yes, current mobo would require add-on card to fix this properly with a large NVMe. Any new mobo removes need to go with 4TB SATA SSD stopgap so....

 

[Double-Click]

Shouldn't need to copy everything, you can just move what files/games you want as needed in Steam w their storage manager.

Steam Support :: Moving a Steam Installation and Games

help.steampowered.com

 

[nomdeplume]

Shouldn't need to copy everything, you can just move what files/games you want as needed in Steam w their storage manager.

Steam Support :: Moving a Steam Installation and Games

help.steampowered.com

I believed this to be the case. Yet the only sane procedure here would require also waiting for a 200TB direct backup copy to spinning rust (all I have free) to complete before attempting this. Option 1 is Option 1 for good reason.

Effectively I was asking if there is an option 3 yet to be considered as well as how risk averse I should be.

 

[Solaris17]

If you format the reg keys break so it wont matter.

This is actually the time you can decide your path moving forward, especially if space is an issue or you plan to format more later.

In my case I have all my games on a completely seperate drive. When I format I simply go back into that drive, into the steam directory and double click the steam.exe. It will do a check then elevate to admin and repair the install.

If you are looking to consolidate or simply switch disks I would do it now.

 

[cvaldes]

Nothing new about this, the built-in Storage Manager has been capable of moving games for a long time.

There's another way of moving (most) Steam games: just copy the directory (under Steam/steamapps/common) and the corresponding appmanifest_XXX.acf file to a different Steam library location.

This is actually the better way if you have modded your game. You can also change the appmanifest file to read-only which will prevent Steam from updating your game files and possibly wrecking your carefully assembled and curated colllection of mods.

It's important to understand that using the Steam desktop client to backup a game will not maintain integrity of your modded game. When you restore from the backup, it'll do a verification at the end and fetch all of the missing/mismatched content blowing away your mods.

 

[nomdeplume]

Nothing new about this, the built-in Storage Manager has been capable of moving games for a long time.

There's another way of moving (most) Steam games: just copy the directory (under Steam/steamapps/common) and the corresponding appmanifest_XXX.acf file to a different Steam library location.

Exactly.

Having fairly recently "verified" numerous games after installing NVMe as boot. Started to wonder if there was a nuance I missed resulting in fairly large updates needing to be downloaded for every game. Not sure if previous Windows installation resulted in corruption or it was induced moving (all but this recent purchase) files around to their present location on a devoted game drive. Possibly it was due to hardware changes?

Since this is actually pretty simple and straightforward if all goes well. I'll just Teracopy all Steam files to external and only the needed ones back into fresh install location. No mods are present to be disrupted.