Help required for moving game to another hard drive

[Peak of human evolution]

I have two HDDs on my PC, the 2nd one is basically empty while the 1st has around 10gb left.

There's a game I want to play but it requires a 20GB update so I figured I should move it to my 2nd hard drive so that it doesn't cause problems with the fact that my 1st/main one won't be able to allocate this 20GB but upon trying to move the game to the other HDD in steam settings, I get an error telling me that this can't be done because an update is required to the game.

How TF can I not move my game to another HDD because it needs an update despite the current HDD it resides in not having near the required storage to update?

[Lavie]

Hi!

Moving a Steam Installation and Games
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4BD4-4528-6B2E-8327

[Jack Schitt]

Here are instructions on how to move a game's installation directly from Steam:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4BD4-4528-6B2E-8327

You can create an alternate location on any drive, which you can choose in the future when installing games.

1. Navigate to your Steam client 'Settings' menu.
2. Select the 'Storage' tab. From here, you can view your default installation drive, as well as creating a new path by selecting the '+' button at the top.
3, Once you have created the new path, all future installations can be installed there.

You can then cut/paste the game's installation files from where they are to the new folder and restart the Steam Client. When Steam fires back up the game might be grayed out as if it's not installed. Just double-click on it (small mode) or click the install/play button. It won't download it again it will run a quick validation and file verification check then it will be ready to play.
...or update then play.

[Lavie]

I feel before 5 years (or before) GPT5 or other AI will do the job to provide Steam links... :-)

[Jack Schitt]

Originally posted by Lavie:

I feel before 5 years (or before) GPT5 or other AI will do the job to provide Steam links... :-)

LOL that thing's hit or miss from what I've seen of it. Sometimes it's spot on, other times it's dead wrong.

[Melanie]

As steam stores your game info couldn't you just uninstall it from its present drive and reinstall it with patch on the big drive? I just uploaded a game now which i removed a few years back and it is showing my old 45 hours playtime.

[Peak of human evolution]

Originally posted by Melanie:

As steam stores your game info couldn't you just uninstall it from its present drive and reinstall it with patch on the big drive? I just uploaded a game now which i removed a few years back and it is showing my old 45 hours playtime.

I am not going to bother reinstalling an 80GB game, because that is going to take me who knows how long

[Peak of human evolution]

Originally posted by Lavie:

Hi!

Moving a Steam Installation and Games
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4BD4-4528-6B2E-8327

I looked these guides up beforehand. The issue I have is this message pops up:
"Moving content to the following apps has failed update required -
- [Game Name] : Update required."

I've used the second hard drive to install games before but I don't have many on it so the folder already exists.

[Jack Schitt]

Originally posted by Tony Montana:

Originally posted by Lavie:

I've used the second hard drive to install games before but I don't have many on it so the folder already exists.

Originally posted by Jack Schitt:

You can then cut/paste the game's installation files from where they are to the new (or other) folder

and restart the Steam Client. When Steam fires back up the game might be grayed out as if it's not installed. Just double-click on it (small mode) or click the install/play button. It won't download it again it will run a quick validation and file verification check then it will be ready to play.
...or update then play.

[Peak of human evolution]

Originally posted by Jack Schitt:

Originally posted by Tony Montana:

I've cut and pasted the game folder into the other HDD and relaunched Steam. On the game's page it says 0 out of 79GB (the size of the game), is this part of the file verification?

[Jack Schitt]

Originally posted by Tony Montana:

I've cut and pasted the game folder into the other HDD and relaunched Steam. On the game's page it says 0 out of 79GB (the size of the game), is this part of the file verification?

What says 0 out of 79GB? I'm not sure where you're seeing this. Screen shot and share.
Also screenshot and share your Storage Manager please.

I have my games in D:\SteamLibrary so my Storage Manager looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/HIuRBo4.jpg

[Peak of human evolution]

Originally posted by Jack Schitt:

Originally posted by Tony Montana:

I've cut and pasted the game folder into the other HDD and relaunched Steam. On the game's page it says 0 out of 79GB (the size of the game), is this part of the file verification?

What says 0 out of 79GB? I'm not sure where you're seeing this. Screen shot and share.
Also screenshot and share your Storage Manager please.

I have my games in D:\SteamLibrary so my Storage Manager looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/HIuRBo4.jpg

On that game's page in my Steam application library, the update button lists the game's file size as if I'm about to install the whole thing
https://postimg.cc/hJH2VPTZ
It only says 92.98mb installed because it automatically began installing when I restarted Steam. The game's rough file size listed here is 70 or so GB

Here's the Storage. The game I cut and pasted into HDD 2 was Fallout 76 but it is still displayed in Steam library Storage as being in HDD 1
https://postimg.cc/D8QGffxd
https://postimg.cc/s1gfGjf4
https://postimg.cc/rKhfy9n9

[Jack Schitt]

Yeah that's showing you the whole game's file size. Click on "Downloads" at the bottom of the client window. That will give you info on the size of the update.It looks like you have it all setup correctly. It's not going to download the whole game, just the update.

Since you moved the installation files when you click to launch the games you moved it's only going to run a validation process and verify the integrity of the game files.

[missm2yuma]

i have a question
i m attempting to move steam games to n external drive
i m told to go to settings then storage...
i do not see storage
what do i do

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by missm2yuma:

i have a question
i m attempting to move steam games to n external drive
i m told to go to settings then storage...
i do not see storage
what do i do

Move the whole Steam folder, that'll be less trouble later down the line.

[fluttersby1217]

Help none of these work it says i need more storage but i have 172 GB free HELP!