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Sloan Kettering Jun 25, 2019 @ 7:31pm
question about Transferring games to external hard drive for friends account.
My buddy lives a couple hours away and has a data cap on his home wifi, he shipped me a 2tb hard drive for me to copy my game files over to it and ship it back to him, he plans to buy the games through his account and then use the external hard drive for the download. Will this work? what do I need to do to make sure it works, have never done this before.

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Originally posted by Ogami:
Yes it works, just copy over the game installation folders to the external HDD.
They are in Steam/steamapps/common.
But make sure you also copy over the corresponding appmanifest file for the games.
Each game has such a file in the steamapps/ folder and it basically tells Steam that a game is installed.
So look up the correct appmanifest number ( just google appmanifest+ game name or look up the Steam ID of the game, its the same number) for the games you send your friend and include those files for him.
On his pc he just needs to put the game installation folders into Steam/steamapps/common and the appmanifest files into Steam/steamapps.
Then restart Steam and all the games should appear as installed in his Steam library.
As long as he did not buy them himself the PLAY button will say PURCHASE.
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Ogami Jun 25, 2019 @ 8:00pm 
Yes it works, just copy over the game installation folders to the external HDD.
They are in Steam/steamapps/common.
But make sure you also copy over the corresponding appmanifest file for the games.
Each game has such a file in the steamapps/ folder and it basically tells Steam that a game is installed.
So look up the correct appmanifest number ( just google appmanifest+ game name or look up the Steam ID of the game, its the same number) for the games you send your friend and include those files for him.
On his pc he just needs to put the game installation folders into Steam/steamapps/common and the appmanifest files into Steam/steamapps.
Then restart Steam and all the games should appear as installed in his Steam library.
As long as he did not buy them himself the PLAY button will say PURCHASE.
Last edited by Ogami; Jun 25, 2019 @ 8:00pm
#1
The Giving One Jun 25, 2019 @ 8:02pm 
Just like the good Ogami said, just make sure to tell your friend to not have Steam running when moving the files about.
#2
Ogami Jun 25, 2019 @ 8:04pm 
Originally posted by The Giving One:
Just like the good Ogami said, just make sure to tell your friend to not have Steam running when moving the files about.

Honestly that does not matter. I copied over files plenty of times with Steam running at the same time, as long as you restart Steam at the end its all good.
#3
The Giving One Jun 25, 2019 @ 8:06pm 
Originally posted by Ogami:
Honestly that does not matter. I copied over files plenty of times with Steam running at the same time, as long as you restart Steam at the end its all good.
I guess you are right, as you just have to restart Steam as you did say above, and there is no harm in doing it with Steam running. I guess I was just thinking out of good habit for other purposes of moving files. Thanks for the comment. :steamhappy:
#4
Sloan Kettering Jun 25, 2019 @ 8:44pm 
Thanks guys, appreciate it.
#5
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All Discussions > Steam Forums > Help and Tips > Topic Details
Date Posted: Jun 25, 2019 @ 7:31pm
Posts: 5
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