How to Move (not delete) game files. Steam support of no help.

[dwn_wth_the_sys]

Steam support says you cannot move your games at all, when anything is shared, and instructs you to uninstalled and forfeit all the accumulated content, like maps and sound files.
If you play GoldSrc games you know many servers limit downloads to actual dial-up speeds. (as in literally 16kb to max 64Kb to download the custom content)

Is it harsh to call this an abject failure?

I need to move HL and mods to C drive to remove D. As it's everything Half Life all at once, not some, where is the shared content conflict???
Anyone have experiences to share of what they tried? Wondering if I copy to somewhere else on C, take drive out, reinstall all, then paste/merge over-top, how well that's likely to work?

Below is support's reply. They sent this and closed the ticket, I'd obviously like to ask if what I'm suggesting above is a good idea, but I'm clearly not getting any more help officially.


Hi,

We understand what you are trying to do. 

Unfortunately, since you are getting "shared content" error, then, it is impossible to move the game files. 

The only workaround here is to uninstall and re-install them again. 

In the event that you are not willing to do the workaround, unfortunately, we won't be able to assist you. 

Because we have provided all the information we have for your issue I'm closing this help request. If you have an unrelated issue please open a new help request and we will be happy to help.

[dwn_wth_the_sys]

No one has ever been in this situation? I assumed it was common and people would have some ideas.

[HikariLight]

Support only handles account and billing issues.
They have nothing to do with the games.

[MonkehMaster]

Początkowo opublikowane przez HikariLight:

Support only handles account and billing issues.
They have nothing to do with the games.

wrong they handle all of the below.

Refund Requests
Account Security & Recovery
Purchase & Billing Support
Game & Steam Technical Support

also and while not mentioned, they also handle community issues as well.

[MonkehMaster]

OP, i dont play the games or have had to do what you are asking.

but, couldnt you simply move the whole game with steams storage settings, to another drive?

you can as well move them manually, but this requires loads more work on the users part.

[m662]

Steam icon -> Settings -> Storage
Select your local drive drop down appears with recognized drives
If not recognized yet Select add drive and look up the drive partition

Select games you want to move by checkbox than click on Move
It might take some time but it should be completely save as long as all files your game interacts with are stored in Steam. If you have for example mods from nexus mod manager than your changing the path and it will cause issues.


Another method or the old one is Steam icon -> Backup and Restore games -> Backup currently installed programs

Select what you want to backup with the check boxes than press Next
Select Browse or type in the new path.
Select if you want to store them at CD size DVD or custom for smaller or larger batches.
Wait for the process to finish and your done.

To restore Steam icon -> Backup and Restore games -> restore a previous backup
Select next and go to the archive folder you used in the first steps
Select the programs with the checkbox and press next.


You can also temporary move things without copying them as long as you do not interact with it until it is back in the original path. Which also means you need to disable auto updates for that game.


Simply browse to the custom folder with the game close Steam completely move the game folder and start Steam again. Do not press Play or let it update and once your done with storage maintenance simply close Steam move the folder back to original path and start Steam up again.

I use this when games are very inefficient with updating and require 100's of GB to do so I simply move all games away let one game update it will shrink in size again and move all others back.



One big warning disable your anti malware live monitoring when doing this as you risk contested file access resulting in an error that you might not recover from resulting in at-least one corrupt game folder.

In addition this moving around will temporarily heavily impact your performance and thus time it takes with most of those anti malware suites because they think you just added new files to a drive so they have to scan everything again (twice)

[sfnhltb]

Początkowo opublikowane przez m662:

Steam icon -> Settings -> Storage
Select your local drive drop down appears with recognized drives
If not recognized yet Select add drive and look up the drive partition

Select games you want to move by checkbox than click on Move
It might take some time but it should be completely save as long as all files your game interacts with are stored in Steam. If you have for example mods from nexus mod manager than your changing the path and it will cause issues.

The OP cannot do this first option because the game contains shared components, and Steam has no way to move such games because it only tries to move one at a time, which isn't allowed because it is shared with another game, and the moving routine isn't smart enough to do all the linked games in one step in such a situation, even if they are all selected.

The second option using backup and restore might work, couldn't say.

[m662]

Początkowo opublikowane przez sfnhltb:

Początkowo opublikowane przez m662:

Steam icon -> Settings -> Storage
Select your local drive drop down appears with recognized drives
If not recognized yet Select add drive and look up the drive partition

Select games you want to move by checkbox than click on Move
It might take some time but it should be completely save as long as all files your game interacts with are stored in Steam. If you have for example mods from nexus mod manager than your changing the path and it will cause issues.

The OP cannot do this first option because the game contains shared components, and Steam has no way to move such games because it only tries to move one at a time, which isn't allowed because it is shared with another game, and the moving routine isn't smart enough to do all the linked games in one step in such a situation, even if they are all selected.

The second option using backup and restore might work, couldn't say.

Has the shared content to be accessed during the move? If not he she should be able to simply copy paste the external folders separate from Steam. Than run the move command on the primary game folder and when done move the files back Than just manually move the external folder to the same path.

I mean it is more cumbersome but I do not see how it would impact it as long as it is not being used in between. Might overlook an detail how ever so always best to test with game that you don't mind losing progress to see if it all works out.


Steam being absolutely prehistoric with the file integrity check method deployed is more than likely a benefit than a risk in this case. More modern software would not get tricked and immediately halt the progress.

I had that pleasure in the past when one of our virtual backup servers decided that one of its physical disks was out of sync than decided that during the sync it was not out of sync but broken. It threw a big hissy fit when I started to manually move things around and we luckily caught the unauthorized overwrite mirror attempt in time which should not have happened because we put the array into maintenance mode. But the vendor thought it was wise to overwrite that when doing manual terminal work instead. Had a pleasant conversation with the vendor after that incident...

[Iron Knights]

Well, you're not being very specific, what are you trying to keep vs. what are you willing to forfeit.
In addition to its own folders, steam saves games & screenshots in C:\Users\<name>\Appdata or ...Documents\Mygames.
You can backup any modded content and your saved games & screenshots. Then uninstall and copy back. Be careful not to backup system or steam files as copying back will overwrite the new with the old.

[Ben Lubar]

Maps are just files. You can move them like you'd move a file normally.