Playing from an external HDD

[Mr Sugrue]

Hey everyone,

Trying to play Destiny 2, I have preloaded/downloaded it onto an external hdd, and I am not sure if the game has completely released yet, but for some reason after plugging in the same harddrive it wants me to download it again, how do I get it to recognise I literally downloaded it yesterday to the HDD that is plugged in right now?

Cheers

[Cathulhu]

Was it connected before you started Steam? Steam only looks for games on startup, if it doesn't find it, it considers it uninstalled and no longer looks for it.
The game releases tomorrow.

[Mr Sugrue]

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

Was it connected before you started Steam? Steam only looks for games on startup, if it doesn't find it, it considers it uninstalled and no longer looks for it.
The game releases tomorrow.

Okay cool, thanks man, that is reassuring.
It is hard to tell, because I precisely remember downloading it and it saying it was downloaded yesterday, but when I check the E:/SteamLibrary/common/steamapps and click on Destiny 2, the folder is actually empty but my 1tb harddrive recognises I only have ~940GB left (this was the first thing I downloaded). So I am not completely sure if the HDD recognises it either, the files are not labelled clearly within E:/SteamLibrary.

Cheers again

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Always connect the drive before launching you game clients, otherwise they won't see that drive and data unless the client gets restarted.

Avoid putting the drive to sleep, you can disable this in os power options plans. As this can make game clients hiccup also when the drive has to wake up, etc.

Also ensure the drive letter doesn't change otherwise the the path to the game files/folders on said drive would be wrong if the drive letter changes.