Upgrading Windows - Don't want to lose steam games

[CMR]

Hi, I need to upgrade from W7 to W8 within the next few days and the only option it gives me is to "keep nothing". So I'm assuming I'm going to lose everything on my hd at the moment. If I just copy the steam folder onto an external hd and put it back when i've upgraded, will i be able to carry on playing the games as before? Or will I still need to download them again? I don't have a great connection so if there'#s some way I can avoid spending days downloading tens of GB worth of stuff again that would be good!

Cheers.

[zeromaveric]

depends on your games. if you're worried about your save file progress, i'd say look at each of your games to see which ones save data on your computer, and which are saved on the steam cloud. games like Dota and TF2 are all server-side, but some still have a file on your computer. i'd say look online for any information about where your save files are located and back those up. once you upgrade, you can reinstall your games easily and pick up where you left off. though, if you have FFVII (i hadn't looked at your full list), then there is a problem since that game has cloud saves, but only up to 2 or 3 computers, and an upgrade would count as a 2nd computer

[Z16]

Copy the *whole* steamapps folder. When you reinstall steam on your new O/S, close steam, paste that folder back into the steam folder and all your games will be visible and seen as installed.

I do this all the time for downloads, I often download on another PC (which is always on) and move them to my main PC afterwards.

As for saves, most will be stored in your My Games (or in Documents itself) folder in Documents, if not you'd have to check for each game that isn't there.