Steam saves not showing up after swapping hardware?

[Rascer]

I recently built a new computer, and after switching to an SSD for my main boot drive, I plugged in my old hard drive I was using with my old computer, which has all of my Steam games and saves on it (which was also my boot drive for my old PC). All I did was plug it in to my new computer, didnt mess with any files or anything, and now there are no saves on ANY of my games at all and when I boot them up, it performs a first time setup like I've never played them. Is there any way I can fix this or any ideas?

[crunchyfrog]

Yup. I think I can guess what's happened.

When you moved over your old system drive, that's where the game save are. Now the games will be expecting the saves to be on your system drive, which is the NEW drive. So of course, it won't see any because they aren't there.

Depending on how many games you have depends on how much work this is. Generally speaking saves can be almost ANYWHERE for games, but they're often in your documents folder. So, it's a case of making sure you copy them across to the SAME location on your SSD. That's all.

For the future to avoid anything like this, I THOROUGHLY recommend GameSaveManager. Not only will it make stuff like this easier. But it's great for backing up game saves. I swear by it.

I simply once a week, open it up and let it find all the game saves. I copy across all the ones for the games I've played in that week and back them up to a secondary offline drive.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Did you transfer the old os installation on the new drive?

Savegames have a place, its not enough to have them just on a drive in the computer, which your old main drive now is.

Describe what you did, and where steam and the games have been before.

[Rascer]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Yup. I think I can guess what's happened.

When you moved over your old system drive, that's where the game save are. Now the games will be expecting the saves to be on your system drive, which is the NEW drive. So of course, it won't see any because they aren't there.

Depending on how many games you have depends on how much work this is. Generally speaking saves can be almost ANYWHERE for games, but they're often in your documents folder. So, it's a case of making sure you copy them across to the SAME location on your SSD. That's all.

For the future to avoid anything like this, I THOROUGHLY recommend GameSaveManager. Not only will it make stuff like this easier. But it's great for backing up game saves. I swear by it.

I simply once a week, open it up and let it find all the game saves. I copy across all the ones for the games I've played in that week and back them up to a secondary offline drive.

So the problem now is that Ive ran Steam from my hard drive even though Im booted on my SSD, and still nothing is showing up. I cant install Steam on my SSD now because it defaults to installing to the hard drive, which would be fine, but even opening games there is still no saves even though the directory is opening from the hard drive.

[ReBoot]

Copy the saves.
Games expect them in specific locations, usually within your profile folder. Since yo got a new boot drive you got a wholly new profile folder. Copy the saves there.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Rascer:

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Yup. I think I can guess what's happened.

When you moved over your old system drive, that's where the game save are. Now the games will be expecting the saves to be on your system drive, which is the NEW drive. So of course, it won't see any because they aren't there.

Depending on how many games you have depends on how much work this is. Generally speaking saves can be almost ANYWHERE for games, but they're often in your documents folder. So, it's a case of making sure you copy them across to the SAME location on your SSD. That's all.

For the future to avoid anything like this, I THOROUGHLY recommend GameSaveManager. Not only will it make stuff like this easier. But it's great for backing up game saves. I swear by it.

I simply once a week, open it up and let it find all the game saves. I copy across all the ones for the games I've played in that week and back them up to a secondary offline drive.

So the problem now is that Ive ran Steam from my hard drive even though Im booted on my SSD, and still nothing is showing up. I cant install Steam on my SSD now because it defaults to installing to the hard drive, which would be fine, but even opening games there is still no saves even though the directory is opening from the hard drive.

The thing you seem to be missing is that you have your old hard drive (let's call it B) and your new install drive (let's call this A).

YOu previously had everything on B. Now you've moved in A, and it is now your windows install drive, your saves are still on B. But steam expects them to be on A.

So copy the saves found where I said in my previous post from B to A.