How restore a game that wasn't backed up?

[WaterDogGUN]

Don't want to have to download Red Dead Redemption again (over 110 gb!) since my internet is limited. I switched hard drives and didn't use the back up/restore feature. I have the games in the common folder intact but not sure how to point Steam to find them. Is there a way for me to restore these? Over 120 gig worth of games that I won't be able to d/l again. With Epic I can partially d/l a file, pause the d/l and move the complete game back up to the downloads folder, then it will do an integrity check and the game will play just fine. But this technique isn't working for Steam. Please tell me there's a solution/workaround. Thanks

[Muppet among Puppets]

Just copy the game folder and the appmanifest file with the number from its store page.
In the "same" place on new drive

[WaterDogGUN]

Thanks for the reply. Didn't work at first but got it figured out.

But it wasn't straight forward. Should someone else with similar issues come across this post, this is how I fixed it. PS: it is best to backup the game via the Steam menu. But if much like me you didn't do that, this is my issue and how I fixed it.

I installed a SSD to this PC, which is a lot smaller than the HDD that previously had windoze 10. As a result I couldn't continue using Steam in this smaller SSD. Installing Steam to a drive other than the start up is what caused issues as copying the games folder didn't work. So I did this, I had to reinstall Steam to the same place it was at originally, in my case it was the default location: program files x86. So I installed Steam to the default location and then added a different drive to host the games, at one of the large HDDs in this PC, then made it the default folder. In my case I already had the steam games folder sitting at the hdd, so it was a simple matter of pointing to it. So now I have Steam installed in my startup drive (a 256 gig SSD) and the games are being d/led to a different internal drive, in this case a 1TB hard drive. Making it the default location will install all new games to that drive. I honestly do not recall how I did that but it was pretty straight forward.

Really glad I didn't have to spend days redownloading Red Dead again, not to mention all the other games.

[WaterDogGUN]

K, for anyone interested here are the instructions:

Steam menu, then choose Settings. Select Downloads and at the very top of the page you'll see 'Steam Library Folders'. In there you'll see the option to install content on multiple drives.

[Snapjak]

Generally it's as simple as
1) shut Steam down
2) cut/copy the entire contents of /steamapps/ (because you want those appmanifest files)
3) paste said contents
4) restart Steam, they should be there.

Though that assumes you want to move them and have enough space. The alternative method is to point Steam to it via the library folder option you went through.