Steam is a wonderful go-to entertainment platform for many PC gamers, and a great portion of your game collection may already be on this platform.
So, by default Steam may have been placed on C drive, but now you wish to move it to a larger partition or an SSD dedicated to your favorite games.
So, how can you move Steam games to another drive without uninstalling or re-downloading them? Well, you will find myriad ways of how one can transfer games to another drive. And, we have rounded up some effective methods for you.
#1: Creation of a Second Steam Folder & Moving Games files using the In-built function
Let’s look at a useful method for moving steam games to another drive. Try the following steps:
- At the outset, go to the second drive of your choice and create a Steam library
- In Steam , go to Settings , and look for Downloads .
- Next, click on the Steam Library Folders .
- Click on ADD LIBRARY FOLDER and choose the drive where you want to create the library folder.
- Click New Folder , Give an appropriate name and click OK .
- Next, click Select and choose the folder you just created.
Note: You will find the folder in the Steam Library folders list. So, you can close this window.
- To move an installed game to the second library, consider right-clicking in your Steam library and select Properties .
- Next, click the LOCAL FILES tab and click the “ MOVE INSTALL FOLDER… ” button.
- Choose the Steam library folder that you may want to move the game and click the MOVE FOLDER
That’s it. Your games’ files would have been moved to the other library location. And, you may choose to repeat the process for other games.
Also, note that the next time you install a new game Steam would ask you to select the library in which you would wish to install. And, you can easily choose the location for the installation of your choice.
#2: Using Steam Mover app and Creating Symbolic Links (Symlinks)
Gaming enthusiasts will love the app - Steam Mover that can move games to another computer, or move Steam games to another drive.
So, SSD-owners it’s welcome news, as the application provides a smooth and organized way of transferring your multi-gigabyte games to other locations.
The app creates symbolic links at the old location, working quite like a signpost. So, while your computer has the feeling that everything is in the same place, the data would actually reside on another hard drive.
To try this method, here are the steps:
- Download Steam Mover and install
- Go to the top of the window and choose the folder where your game is currently located , on the left. And, on the right, browse to the new location where you wish to move the game too.
Note : In the case, the new folder location does not exist, you may create it.
- Next, select your game for the given list, and click the blue arrow shown at the bottom.
- You will be prompted with a black command prompt window, which will show the progress of the copy.
Allow the process to complete, and you will find your game in the new folder. Also, you will find a shortcut in the original folder.
Finally, you may run it from Steam or from the shortcut created. Now, you may choose to repeat the process for all the games that you may want to be transferred.
#3: Using Steam Library Manager and Bulk-moving Games
You may also choose to use an excellent free utility, the Steam Library Manager (SLM) to manage your Steam libraries, and moving your Steam games, and making backup copies. The interface is quite user-friendly and it lists down all the libraries on your PC and the games available in each of these libraries. Here are some useful features to look out for:
- Display of free storage space for each of the drives where a library is created.
- Dragging and dropping the games from one library to another is possible.
- Use the Task Manager section to bulk move files.
- You can launch games in Steam from the SLM utility.
- The movement is displayed through the real-time progress report.
So, the next time you are wondering on you how to move steam games to another drive? Consider downloading and installing the app, and you can move the Steam games, and also check out the log generated at the end of the process.
Moving Steam games has never been so smooth, enjoy the versatility and ease by following the methods discussed.
We would be happy to hear from you on the solutions that have worked best for you, so drop in your solutions, comments, and suggestions in the comments box below.
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