What is the minimal amount I need to backup to protect my games?

[gamejunk]

I am fairly new to all this and I have some valve games and Titan Fall.

Currently my common path is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common . I know I can move some stuff around but don't know the details and what happens if I do.

But I don't like having to backup all those huge files every time I do a backup, which is often.

I can do incremental and selective backups at a fine level and my resources include a second large SSD.

Is their a safe way to segregate everything that I need to backup from what I can recover from the Steam site?

If I just knew what I needed to backup and what I can recover from the Steam site without backing up might be helpful.


Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks!

[Blargo]

Steam has a relatively new backup & restore feature now. From the toolbar:
Steam > Backup and Restore Games

Should be all you need.

[crunchyfrog]

Just to add to what DXExpress says, I'd urge a bit of caution to the official backup procedure. If this truly is a new one, then it may be OK. I haven't heard anything about it. Because traditionally, it has been AWFUL and buggy.

And the biggest problem with it has traditionally been that the files copy, they verify, and you only find out they don't work when you try to use them, and by then it's too late.

But I don't know why you're asking to back up the actual game files - if this is because if something happens you don't want to download loads of files again, then that's fair enough.

But be warned though - you really do not need to backup the game files. Simply because they'll always be here for you to download as often as you wish. Furthermore, if Steam goes tits up, likely backups wouldn't work anyway. Valve have commented on this matter, but it's something to bear in mind.

Basically, all you need to backup are the contents of the steamapps folder - all game data is in there.

What I would recommend you do though is backup your game saves. There's a great utility for this (as game saves can be all over the place on your PC) - Game Save Manager (www.gamesave-manager.com)

It scans what games you have, then collates and backups all your game save within a few clicks. If you have more than a handful of games, this is a necessity on Steam, frankly.

I just do a backup to a son drive after every few play sessions, backing THAT drive up to a master Father drive I keep loads of console and computer saves on. I even have a grandfather copy of that drive too for redundancy as there's a hell of a lot of data on there.

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by gamejunk:

I am fairly new to all this and I have some valve games and Titan Fall.

Currently my common path is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common . I know I can move some stuff around but don't know the details and what happens if I do.

But I don't like having to backup all those huge files every time I do a backup, which is often.

I can do incremental and selective backups at a fine level and my resources include a second large SSD.

Is their a safe way to segregate everything that I need to backup from what I can recover from the Steam site?

If I just knew what I needed to backup and what I can recover from the Steam site without backing up might be helpful.


Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks!

Sounds to me like you already have a backup solution but are just wanting to eliminate the large files that you could get from Steam.

If that is the case, anything in the *\steamapps folder can be excluded. These are all of the files that the games need to run and can be re-downloaded from Steam. If you've added or modified any of those game files, you'd need to decide whether to back those up separately.

Anything else like screenshots, save files, custom game covers/pictures, etc, are all stored in other folders. If you're looking to save that data easily, using the Game Save Manager that crunchyfrog suggests would be best.

[gamejunk]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Sounds to me like you already have a backup solution but are just wanting to eliminate the large files that you could get from Steam.

If that is the case, anything in the *\steamapps folder can be excluded. ...

rawWwRrr you nailed what I am after.

What you are saying sounds like what I would like to hear, but logically I need to sort this a bit to understand so I don't go do dumb things.

In starting to sort it all I notice that a name like the "steamapps" folder sounds something like it might be, "all the app stuff" and the "common" sounds something like it might be "what users have in common for their current installed apps".

Is that about right?

The only huge part of the games seems to be the "common" directory. So I am most interested in get around backing it up and what you said seems to indicate that would be OK. If I could do that, my gaming part of my backups could be 10 to 50 times faster. (with Arconis).

I don't mind backing up EVERYTHING excluding the "common" directory if I can get away with it.

My worry is whether I would get screwed if I don't keep "common" in sync with stuff external to "common". If "common" is automagically synced up by Steam, that would be GOOD.
If not, I might do have problems if the game is versioned or modified by the creators of the game between the time I backup and restore....


(of course I am just guessing at all this... don't know yet if I am on track or not.)