How to move steam games directory to MY Games on the same drive

[Zoron]

Tried to follow the troubleshooting guide but apparently unless you are doing it to a seperate drive you can't do it. I can't do that because I only have 2 drives and one is dedicated to recovery so how the hell can I do it in the same drive?

If anyone is of any help I would be extremely grateful.

[ReBoot]

Move the whole Steam folder there. Problem solved.

[Peabrain]

Your games currently here D:\steam\.....
You want D:\Mygames\

Add the location above or however/whereever to your Library. Close Steam. Now
drag and drop current game folder to new folder then load Steam

[Zoron]

Originally posted by Peabrain:

Your games currently here D:\steam\.....
You want D:\Mygames\

Add the location above or however/whereever to your Library. Close Steam. Now
drag and drop current game folder to new folder then load Steam

Tried that and it gives me some error message saying there is already a steam folder on the drive and it being able to have multiple games in that folder. Won't let me choose a new location in the same drive as I said in the start.

[ReBoot]

Because you cant. http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/1696040635902375215/?tscn=1519809772#c1696040635902392490

[JPMcMillen]

Originally posted by Zoron:

Originally posted by Peabrain:

Your games currently here D:\steam\.....
You want D:\Mygames\

Add the location above or however/whereever to your Library. Close Steam. Now
drag and drop current game folder to new folder then load Steam

Tried that and it gives me some error message saying there is already a steam folder on the drive and it being able to have multiple games in that folder. Won't let me choose a new location in the same drive as I said in the start.

Steam will only allow a single Steam folder for games on each drive. I think it used to be different in the past but must have been changed due to problems with people having multiple Steam folders on the same drive.

Unfortunately, there is no setting to allow you to move the existing folder to a new location on the same hard drive. Although it does beg the question, why move it? It's going to perform exactly the same regardless of which folder the steamapps folder is linked from. If you want to make it easier to find you could just create a shortcut or add the folder as a new library or favorite.

[Supafly]

Originally posted by Peabrain:

Your games currently here D:\steam\.....
You want D:\Mygames\

Add the location above or however/whereever to your Library. Close Steam. Now
drag and drop current game folder to new folder then load Steam

Think that should be
Your games currently here D:\steam\.....
You want D:\Mygames\

With Steam closed rename the your games currently here D:\steam\.....folder to _backup?_old or something.
Load Steam > Settings > Downloads > Steam LIbrary Folders > Right click and Remove folder (orignal folder that you just renamed)

Now Add Library Folder
D:\Mygames\ and close Steam

Now copy and paste everything in the original _backup/_old folder to D:\Mygames\
Load Steam once complete

[Supafly]

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

Although it does beg the question, why move it?

Move it between drives would be you want to move a game currently playing to SSD for slightly better load times. Or a game on a full Drive needs an update but it is too big to install as the drive is full. Can't move a game that needs an update sso you move another game of the drive freeing up needed space.

[JPMcMillen]

Originally posted by Suicidal Monkey:

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

Although it does beg the question, why move it?

Move it between drives would be you want to move a game currently playing to SSD for slightly better load times. Or a game on a full Drive needs an update but it is too big to install as the drive is full. Can't move a game that needs an update sso you move another game of the drive freeing up needed space.

The op wants to move the folder to a different location on the SAME drive, something Steam doesn't do. I get wanting to move your games to a faster drive, I did that myself when I bought a much faster HDD.

She want's to move it from
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\
to
C:\Users\Zoron\Documents\My Games

[The Giving One]

As long as the folder you create in the "add a library folder" option is in fact empty when created, then you should be able to add as many library folders on the same drive as you want. I was not aware of any restriction on that.

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

[Supafly]

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

The op wants to move the folder to a different location on the SAME drive, something Steam doesn't do. I get wanting to move your games to a faster drive, I did that myself when I bought a much faster HDD.

Only reason I could think of for the same drive would be just for organisation purposes. All games in one place on the same drive.

I have C:\Games\..... for a few games on my SSD
Rest of my games are D:\Games\ with several sub folders for Steam, Gog, Ubisoft etc etc

[The Giving One]

You cannot add any library folder that has anything in it. The folder must be empty, or Steam will give you that exact error message, saying that it has to be empty.

So you cannot just add a drive letter, for example, unless that hard drive is totally empty.

[JPMcMillen]

Originally posted by Suicidal Monkey:

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

The op wants to move the folder to a different location on the SAME drive, something Steam doesn't do. I get wanting to move your games to a faster drive, I did that myself when I bought a much faster HDD.

Only reason I could think of for the same drive would be just for organisation purposes. All games in one place on the same drive.

I have C:\Games\..... for a few games on my SSD
Rest of my games are D:\Games\ with several sub folders for Steam, Gog, Ubisoft etc etc

I got over that need to rigidly organize my computer years ago. If I really need to get somewhere on my computer frequently, I'll create a shortcut or add it to my favorites or a library in the windows explorer. People futzing around with their computer leads to more problems and I just don't need that in my life anymore.

[Supafly]

Originally posted by JPMcMillen:

I got over that need to rigidly organize my computer years ago. If I really need to get somewhere on my computer frequently, I'll create a shortcut or add it to my favorites or a library in the windows explorer. People futzing around with their computer leads to more problems and I just don't need that in my life anymore.

I don't fuss about once installed, thats just the way I organise when first installed. I have a folder on desktop with shortcuts to the things I use more frequently.....keeps desktop clear....ish. Nowadays I tend to just Windows Key + S and start type the name of the program I want clicking it when it appears.

[Magmaster]

Okay, so what I did was simply this. 1st things first, I did this on Windows 10 Pro. Not sure if that matters.

My default folder was the standard one, "Steam." Any name I change this too, Steam reads it and applies that as the default library. So, I was having the issue that I couldn't change the default library, no matter what I did.

Apparently Steam operates on the presumption of our stupidity and has made it way more simple than that. You literally have to do the stupid thing to make it work that you should never ever do with any other program.

I exited steam so that it wasn't running on my system. Then I dragged the Steam folder, over to another location. This means the folder with the Steam.exe, file, all the other files, all of the folders within that Steam folder were dragged with it. Yes, this would never ever works with any other program, and back when we were stupid, we ruined a few installed programs trying to do that, right?

Well, with steam, it works. I dragged the whole folder over to the different location. Opened it up at that new location, and double-clicked Steam.exe file to run steam again. It apparently updated its new location, ran just fine, and even automatically applied the new location as its default library for this drive.

Now, I don't know if I'll run into issues, but the alternative was uninstalling steam, moving the game folders to a new location, and reinstalling steam to an other than default location, and then seeing how I can get that game back into its library folder. And I'll still do that if I run into issues.

Oh, and for all of you asking, "Well, why would you need to move it on the same drive, kyuck?" BECAUSE IT'S A WELL-KNOWN BUT OFT-FORGOTTEN ISSUE IN WINDOWS THAT INSTALLING ANYTHING INTO PROGRAM FILES AND THEN MODDING IT CAN CAUSE PROBLEMS. Not usually, but it happens enough for it to be mentioned more than once. And of course, the default location of Steam install and library(same folder) is in one of the program files folders.

So, anyway, that's how it worked for me.

[Forsythe]

Originally posted by Cairn:

Okay, so what I did was simply this. 1st things first, I did this on Windows 10 Pro. Not sure if that matters.

My default folder was the standard one, "Steam." Any name I change this too, Steam reads it and applies that as the default library. So, I was having the issue that I couldn't change the default library, no matter what I did.

Apparently Steam operates on the presumption of our stupidity and has made it way more simple than that. You literally have to do the stupid thing to make it work that you should never ever do with any other program.

I exited steam so that it wasn't running on my system. Then I dragged the Steam folder, over to another location. This means the folder with the Steam.exe, file, all the other files, all of the folders within that Steam folder were dragged with it. Yes, this would never ever works with any other program, and back when we were stupid, we ruined a few installed programs trying to do that, right?

Well, with steam, it works. I dragged the whole folder over to the different location. Opened it up at that new location, and double-clicked Steam.exe file to run steam again. It apparently updated its new location, ran just fine, and even automatically applied the new location as its default library for this drive.

Now, I don't know if I'll run into issues, but the alternative was uninstalling steam, moving the game folders to a new location, and reinstalling steam to an other than default location, and then seeing how I can get that game back into its library folder. And I'll still do that if I run into issues.

Oh, and for all of you asking, "Well, why would you need to move it on the same drive, kyuck?" BECAUSE IT'S A WELL-KNOWN BUT OFT-FORGOTTEN ISSUE IN WINDOWS THAT INSTALLING ANYTHING INTO PROGRAM FILES AND THEN MODDING IT CAN CAUSE PROBLEMS. Not usually, but it happens enough for it to be mentioned more than once. And of course, the default location of Steam install and library(same folder) is in one of the program files folders.

So, anyway, that's how it worked for me.

Just wanted to say that this totally worked for me - I closed Steam, just cut and pasted the whole Steam folder into the new location, and ran the Steam.exe. Steam corrected itself and now has the new location as the default library. I only had to pin the new shortcut (since the old path now no longer exists), but other than that, it's all good. Thanks!