steam backups no longer work

[bobbygr]

When I attempt to back up ANY game I own within steam, I am getting burned. The backup does create the structure gamename/disk1 in my selected folder like it used to but when I open up disk1 instead of seeing a steambackup.exe to restore the game back like I used to,
all I see is a bunch of .csd and .csm files and a sku.sis file. THERE IS NO STEAMBACKUP.EXE TO RESTORE THE GAME BACK TO STEAM. COULD SOMEONE VERIFY MY PROBLEM ON YOUR SYSTEM TO SEE IF YOU GET THE SAME RESULTS (USE A SMALL GAME). What's going on? did something change? how do I restore my backup now with nothing executable in the game folder to click on? I am very confused about this.......if there is a change, will my old steambackup.exe backups still work for restore? HEEELLLLLPPPPPPP!

[Kossetsu]

I just backed up Bastion to verify your claim and this[i.imgur.com] is what I got. Seems like it's working to me. Are you sure the backup procedure is completing before you end it or are you cancelling it early?

[bobbygr]

No i did not cancel anything. In fact, I just discovered, some games backup like your file structure and the old file structure of my backups and some games back up with the new file structure and MUST be restored from within STEAM since there is no executable in the backup.
I don't understand why all backups are not the same. Color me confused......

[DuDE|StanGe]

yeah i noticed that too. i guess that games which uses the new content system somehow don´t create the steambackup.exe anymore. but all is not lost. as @Tsundere Kanojo said, just go to steam->backup and restore games->restore a previous backup and then select the folder where you saved your backup to. steam will automatically detect the backup and restore the game for you.

[KrazyKanuck]

just to add... when restoring a backup from disc of my own, Steam did not ask for discs 2 and 3, once it was done with disc 1 it immediatley went to downloading the remaining data, I had to copy all 3 disc files into one folder for it to read ALL the data at one time without downloading.

[AutomaticOcelot]

I posted a thread similar to this in the Dark Souls forum. :) The short answer is some games will automatically give you an EXE to restore, and some won't.
The Backup and Restore feature (supposedly) does the job regardless of an EXE. Think back when Steam wasn't on 30 million computers, it was handy to have a way to make things easier. Unfortunately they didn't really give us a good idea about the feature change. Maybe it's in some past patch notes somewhere...
Anyway, after all that I still find the Backup feature tremendously inefficient and unrelible for multiple games or entire library. So I'm giving this util a shot before I reformat and upgrade to Win 64-bit. Because I *do* know how much of a pain it is to reverify an entire library instead of redownloading 250 gig. X(
http://www.overclock.net/t/969143/open-source-automatic-steam-backup-restore-tool

[Jason Vulpes]

Problem solved: I was having the same problem while backing up multiple games and the restore feature not seeing the backup file.

When you setup the back, DO NOT let steam name it, you have to rename it yourself to something like 'Backup'. If you let steam name it by itself when backing up multiple games then the file name ends up too long for windows or steam to read correctly.

[yeeyoh]

I would go with just copying and pasting the files to another disk for backup/reinstall, if at all possible.

[MemeKing]

i was unable to burn the csd files to a disk, is this possible?

[{HK} Nightrider [MP]]

I play Day of Defeat and have 3,378 hrs on record last played on Nov 29 Day of Defeat.
I did a Back up of my Half life files and my Day of defeat files to another hard drive since the 2nd hard drive had more space. Well in the process it did not copy my PersonalConfig file. And I have tried to figure out how to replace the file but can't since there all in either CSM or CSD format. I can't just open the file and replace the config file. Since I can't even open the file.

[neverbeensane]

try exiting steam via tray icon and the restart by right click on desktop icon and run as admin. this fixed my install from backup issues. so might work for you.

[neverbeensane]

Nightrider님이 먼저 게시:

I play Day of Defeat and have 3,378 hrs on record last played on Nov 29 Day of Defeat.
I did a Back up of my Half life files and my Day of defeat files to another hard drive since the 2nd hard drive had more space. Well in the process it did not copy my PersonalConfig file. And I have tried to figure out how to replace the file but can't since there all in either CSM or CSD format. I can't just open the file and replace the config file. Since I can't even open the file.

in windows your personal files are in my docs/ my games. back up only does the game files.

[neverbeensane]

my back ups are in sis / csm ect and reinstalled ok

[Seven7]

Built-in backup for backup original game files ONLY it NEVER backup settings and game saves and mods
Steam Cloud and game saves manager - for backup settings and game saves