How to disassociate a hard drive from Steam?

[burdfishdemon]

So I recently bought a new hard drive. Last night I transferred all 800GB from Steam Common folder to my new hard drive. But when I go to my Steam settings and try to delete/disassociate my old hard drive, it won't let me because the Steam folder needs to be empty. So I took awhile to delete everything from the Steam folder on my old hard drive (including the Steam folder itself). But the Steam folder wouldn't delete.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Exit Steam Client; go to the Drive u no longer wish to have Steam see/use and then re-name the Steam Library (or whatever it is called for u); simple as that. Upon next launch of Steam Client, that drive's Steam Library should no longer be there.

[burdfishdemon]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

Exit Steam Client; go to the Drive u no longer wish to have Steam see/use and then re-name the Steam Library (or whatever it is called for u); simple as that. Upon next launch of Steam Client, that drive's Steam Library should no longer be there.

Hello again. It didn't work. I just reformatted my whole old hard drive and restarted steam. STILL can't remove it.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Reformatted which drive? The secondary games drive, or the OS drive?

Try this instead:

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

If Steam Client does give u issues; simply go to the Steam folder where it is located/installed and clear out all the files there; except for the following:

- Steam.exe (application)
- Steamapps (folder)
- Userdata (folder)
- SSFN#### (file)

once you delete the other files/folder here; then right click Steam.exe and click Run As Admin; which will re-download latest Steam Client files again (your games are in Steamapps, so that should be all safe). If you were running Steam Client Beta, after doing this u need to go back to Settings and Opt'in to Beta again.

[burdfishdemon]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

Reformatted which drive? The secondary games drive, or the OS drive?

Try this instead:

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

If Steam Client does give u issues; simply go to the Steam folder where it is located/installed and clear out all the files there; except for the following:

- Steam.exe (application)
- Steamapps (folder)
- Userdata (folder)
- SSFN#### (file)

once you delete the other files/folder here; then right click Steam.exe and click Run As Admin; which will re-download latest Steam Client files again (your games are in Steamapps, so that should be all safe). If you were running Steam Client Beta, after doing this u need to go back to Settings and Opt'in to Beta again.

First I deleted all the things in SteamApps which took 45 minutes for my PC to do. Still wouldn't let me disassociate that drive even though Steam folder was empty. Reformatted the drive I want gone after transferring things. Still wouldn't let me disassociate that drive. I then went through over 250 Steam games and deleted local content for each, including hidden ones. That took awhile I even cleaned registry and emptied everything. Still wouldn't let me disassociate that drive. It doesn't matter; as no remnants, no shells of drive E (my old one) remain in Steam. There shouldn't be any practical implications then.

Also, I noticed that yesterday when I transferred the entire SteamApps ---> Common folder (which took at least 18 hours), none of the exe's transferred. This led to some confusion, but at least the game data is definitely there. Been working out the kinks of all this for a couple days now. Thanks for all your help.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Sounds like u deleted what I stated not to delete; seriously, why delete your games?

And I really don't understand your issue; show some pics of where u see your old drive in Steam Library Folder location. Even still if you don't have games actually there; then there is no reason for concern anyways.

If u followed my instructions; as simple as that is; your Steam Client settings should have all reverted back to defaults; except that your Steam Games and UserData (things like Cloud-Sync'ed Save Data) should still be there. The point of what I posted was to clear your Steam Client of its settings.

Are you sure that you do not have multiple copies of the Steam Client on your system?

[chiefputsilao✖️ping]

if old hdd is not the boot drive and you already have a backup of your importan files and folders from the old hdd:
1. exit from steam, confirm that all steam process are not running under windows task manager.
2. format old hdd.

format = deletion of files/folders = loss of data

[Spawn of Totoro]

If you don't intend to use the old drive, just remove it. If you need to, you can use disk manager to change the drive letter to what your previous drive used to be.

Alternatively, you can just use the disk manager to swap their drive letters around, then Steam will be looking at the new drive under the old drive's letter and it would have worked fine.

I've done the first with my own drive and it worked out fine.

After transfering the files, you still need to verify the game's cach incase of corrupt/missing files from the transfer. I have found, when moving so many at one time, that corrupt files still happen, even if windows doesn't state as such.

[burdfishdemon]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

Sounds like u deleted what I stated not to delete; seriously, why delete your games?

And I really don't understand your issue; show some pics of where u see your old drive in Steam Library Folder location. Even still if you don't have games actually there; then there is no reason for concern anyways.

If u followed my instructions; as simple as that is; your Steam Client settings should have all reverted back to defaults; except that your Steam Games and UserData (things like Cloud-Sync'ed Save Data) should still be there. The point of what I posted was to clear your Steam Client of its settings.

Are you sure that you do not have multiple copies of the Steam Client on your system?

Well upon booting today, the issue has been resolved. Maybe I gave you the wrong impression. At first I intended to just delete what needed to be deleted in order to disassociate the old drive from Steam. However, as that would not work (and I had already transferred everything important to my new drive), I formatted the old drive. That drive was failing slightly btw (hence the switch to my new drive). I had previously copied Steam stuff over to the new drive in one fell 15-hour swoop. Since it wouldn't disassociate even after the reformatting, I individually deleted local content for each game, since in properties it still told me it was in the old drive. Whatever though; it's done. :] And I haven't lost data that I know of.

Also, Spawn of Totoro, my old drive is now not the main drive; it is the E drive fortunately. But that is a good tip if anyone has an old hard drive as C, I would imagine.

Thanks for the help!

[76561199184287988]

fak

[Mike]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.