Can Steam let us not compress game files backups?

[billybadass]

*I have seen that some people here have said they can copy and import the games easily but that has not been my experience and I would like to see the functionality implemented natively*

It does not save any extraordinary amount of space. It takes MUCH longer to spend all that time compressing, instead of just copying. It's going to take about 3 hrs+ to backup Doom and WWII when it could be doing it (copying files without compression) in 12 minutes based on my disk transfer speeds. And the decompression/game files restore will be equally long and horrible.

I wanted only to move my game files to an external SSD over USB 3, so could we just have the option to copy the game files over, but within Steam's backup and restore feature?

I don't see any reason not to, they are kept openly uncompressed in the steamapps common folder as it is by default. I have tried copying game files over and installing them by myself but it all ended in tears anyway and i had to download from scratch.

I would also really like to see pause/resume buttons and a disk write / read speed display in the backup and restore dialogue too

[Patcoola]

You can just copy and paste the game directly from the hard drive without Steam.

Note: you should also copy the appmanifest_[ID].acf file as well. You can find the game's ID from the steam store address bar.

Default Address for Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps

You can also run your games directly from an external USB drive.
First go the settings->downloads->add library
Select the external drive

you can move games by selecting the game in Steam right-click->properties->Local Files
Select move

or you can just copy and past the games directly to the external drive in the appropriate directories.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Cut/paste is faster.