External Hardrive Help

[Innocentblaze686]

Hey all, I've got a question. I own an external hard drive that I use for both my gaming desktop PC and my laptop, and I frequently switch between the two. The issue I am currently having is that desktop and the laptop both have separate Steam folders that do not recognize the games I install on the other device; for example, I just installed four-five games this past week onto the external hard drive via my laptop since I was on vacation. Today, I plugged it into the desktop, and instead of seeing the games I installed last week, it instead created a new Steam folder that is empty.
So the question I have is twofold: 1. How do I prevent this from continually happening to me?
2. How do I manual switch the Steam folder my computers are looking into for games on the external hard drive?
Thanks!

[MancSoulja]

New Steam libraries need to be in empty folders, so you essentially have to trick Steam.

Rename your existing Steam library (with the games) to something different or even just add old to the end of the name (SteamLibraryOld) for example.

Now, open Steam on your desktop and delete any libraries it has set on that drive, Create a new library and call it exactly the same as the original name of the library you had working with your laptop.

Once that is done, drag and drop the contents of your old libarary folder to the new one and you have a library that both devices will detect.

Just remember to connect your USB drive to your PC before launching Steam or the games wont show up.