Ext Hdd games away

[Xeno]

I installed games on my ext hdd. and know i cant play it. 2 days before i played the games without problems and now my steam library says i don´t have the game, but on my ext hdd is the game avaible. i can´t start it from the ext, than steam says to me "install"... what is the problem about that? :(

[The Giving One]

It is not recommended to install games on externals, as well as Steam itself.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

It is not recommended that you install Steam to an external hard drive, due to potential performance issues.

This is one reason why. You can do it and some do, but without setting up permissions properly, as well as power features, this type of thing can happen.

The safe thing to do, is keep the .acf files for the games and the game files themselved stored there. Then, when you want to play that game, drag them over to your internal drive, where Steam is installed.

[wuddih]

then you plugged it out or it lost connection otherwise while Steam still was running or was started.

it is not recommended to place steam libraries on removable drives.

[Ocsabat]

Has the drive letter perhaps changed since the last time you played?

[The Giving One]

It "might" be possible to get the files back without having to redownload them...I stress "might".

Right click the drive where the files were. Go to properties and then previous versions tab. See if you can get the files from a previous restore point, if there is one that has that previous version.

If this is a thumb drive, I highly doubt this will work, though.

If you cannot find the .acf files for those games, Steam will see them as "uninstalled" and report that you need to "install" that game.

EDIT..Of course, you need to manually check the drive and see if the game files are actually there. The issue may be with the .acf files instead.