Moving steam games to a larger dirve

[nam1966]

I had to reinstall Windows 10 Pro which is on my c drive. My c drive is a nvme2 ssd and all of my games are on another drive. I bought a 2tb ssd which I want to put my installed games on. I have watched videos, but still can't move the games to the new drive. Steam wants to just download the games to the new drive. I am at a loss. Any help would be appreciated.

[zaphodikus]

screenshot of the screen when you press "move game" please. Some games wont move, they must re-install - the way to do that is to symlink. If you cannot symlink it yourself, then that's the way it is, re-install the game. bandwidth is just time for most of us.

[Snapjak]

Steam (top left) > settings > downloads > steam library folders > add library folder > ifyouneedtobetoldwhattodohere/facepalm
--then--
Right-click the game you want to move IN YOUR LIBRARY > properties > local files tab > move install folder



Do not manually move the files unless you know specifically how that works. Hint: it requires moving specific other files and restarting Steam.

[ttb57]

I just cloned my Steam contents to my new SSD and worked flawlessly. I used Acronis but there are free ones out there.

[SeriousCCIE]

Move game works -- as does dumping the entire steam library over and then pointing steam to it as the install folder. Steam should then 'discover' the files.

I have seen steam decide that something was different and redownload stuff--that is much more common if there was a hardware change (I imagine that... something dependent on the hardware platform is triggering the change).

I've also had it where I tried to save time and prevent a few hundred gig from being redownloaded when I have different user accounts, all licensed, and one install... and that I forgot to remove my account details from the vdf or whatever files, causing steam to state that the user accessing the content is not the one licensed to use it, even though that user has a license to the game that is otherwise seen as being licensed specifically to my account.

In that case I had to look up what to remove so that steam could then go oh yeah why is this here oh ok you can use it you're licensed and yay I've saved hours of downloading.

Ultimately you should be able to drag and drop the folder over (at least, that's how I've made and restored "backups" of installs--such as when replacing an SSD and copying the games to a slow mechanical drive, then copying them all "back" onto the new SSD). Steam didn't even notice -- as long as steam wasn't open at the same time I did that and that I ensured the new SSD had the same drive letter as the previous one.

then when I opened steam again, the games were already populated in the library as if nothing had happened.