Copying, NOT MOVING, steam game files to another hard drive.

[Criosdaidhlaoch]

My son and I have both been playing steam games on my PC. He is getting his own PC for his birthday. Our internet is too slow to download all those games over again so I'd like to copy those games over to his PC without downloading them all over again. How can I go about this? He has his own steam account on which these games have been purchased/activated independently of my account. I can install his hard drive from his new PC into my PC if that makes it work some how. The problem is I've had no luck with just copying steam files and folders. When I've done it in the past it always says "discovering existing steam files" and when it does that it just deletes them all and starts downloading from scratch. Which is garbage.

What can I do to get these games copied from my hard drive to his new hard drive without downloading them over again?

[Blargo]

Your installed games & other software will be under:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps

Simply copying this folder onto the new drive (at the same directory path) should be enough. When you install Steam onto the new PC, it should automatically detect the files in the steamapps folder.

[Satoru]

Use the backup and restore function

[Blargo]

Originally posted by Satoru:

Use the backup and restore function

Oh right, I forgot about this feature.

Do this instead. From the client toolbar:
Steam > Backup and Restore Games

[Criosdaidhlaoch]

Thank you for the suggestions, I'm going to try that.

I have another problem now, Several games like The Secret World and Elder Scrolls Online and The Lord of the Rings Online aren't there to be selected for back up, TSW and ESO I got through steam. Wtf can't I back those games up? They are up to date.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Just make same partitions on new pc and copy steam folder and library folders in the same place again.

You can do it another way, but that one is the straight forward one.