Cloning Hard Drive with Steam install to another drive?

All Discussions > Steam Forums > Hardware and Operating Systems > Topic Details

Filipino Fighting for Freedom! Jul 5, 2016 @ 10:37am

i've got Steam (plus some other games) installed on a drive (not my boot drive) that's set to drive letter D. i'd like to upgrade to a larger SSD as i'm running out of space on the original drive.

if i clone the smaller drive onto a larger SSD one, and then set the larger drive's drive letter to D (switching the old one of course), will Steam or the installed games still work without having to reinstall anything?

none of the drives involved are boot drives. this is on a Win 8.1 system.

< >

Showing 1-12 of 12 comments

˜lokkandload˜™ Jul 5, 2016 @ 10:57am

I would think as long as the mapping/path for the game technically remains the same i'd say yes.

秦浏橄 [3700] Jul 5, 2016 @ 11:05am

It did not work for me, i just manually copied all contents to the new drive, swapped it out but steam made me redownload all games again

_I_ Jul 5, 2016 @ 12:16pm

as long as the drives are assigned the same letters when the os is installed it will be fine
os drive and accessory drives

Last edited by _I_; Jul 5, 2016 @ 12:17pm

Bad 💀 Motha Jul 5, 2016 @ 3:00pm

Originally posted by 174 Zefirka:
It did not work for me, i just manually copied all contents to the new drive, swapped it out but steam made me redownload all games again

Cause u didn't put them in correct place, or u didn't copy files you needed to tell Steam Client the games are there. You can't only copy Steamapps folder content and expect the games to work.

For cloning, nothing is changing, you are making an exact copy of all the contents, OS, registry, etc.

After a clone, just ensure to reboot and then change Boot order so that now you boot from the new drive.

If both the old and new drives stay in the system; then you need to maybe manually change drive letters once inside the OS, so the new drive takes the drive letter of the drive is was cloned from; so that when u load up say Steam Client off C Drive, it is seeing the games on the new drive, on letter D. As without any manual changes, your new cloned drive would now be letter E, which u do not want.

You can change all that under Computer Management > Drive Management.
For example;
old games drive = letter D
new games drive = letter E

Right click D drive > drive letter > remove > click OK

Right click E drive > drive letter > assign as D > click OK

Now do the same for old drive, but assign a different letter

Last edited by Bad 💀 Motha; Jul 5, 2016 @ 3:04pm

秦浏橄 [3700] Jul 5, 2016 @ 10:49pm

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:
Originally posted by 174 Zefirka:
It did not work for me, i just manually copied all contents to the new drive, swapped it out but steam made me redownload all games again

Cause u didn't put them in correct place, or u didn't copy files you needed to tell Steam Client the games are there. You can't only copy Steamapps folder content and expect the games to work.

For cloning, nothing is changing, you are making an exact copy of all the contents, OS, registry, etc.

After a clone, just ensure to reboot and then change Boot order so that now you boot from the new drive.

If both the old and new drives stay in the system; then you need to maybe manually change drive letters once inside the OS, so the new drive takes the drive letter of the drive is was cloned from; so that when u load up say Steam Client off C Drive, it is seeing the games on the new drive, on letter D. As without any manual changes, your new cloned drive would now be letter E, which u do not want.

You can change all that under Computer Management > Drive Management.
For example;
old games drive = letter D
new games drive = letter E

Right click D drive > drive letter > remove > click OK

Right click E drive > drive letter > assign as D > click OK

Now do the same for old drive, but assign a different letter

Uhh ye i work in IT support since 2009... i was just curious to see if a pure copy-paste would work, both drives, new and old of course had the same path assigned

Bad 💀 Motha Jul 5, 2016 @ 10:54pm

If it's a drive to drive clone; then there is no "effing" it up, cause you are leaving nothing out.

And since it's just games drive and not an OS drive, it's a little different (cause of the drive letter change up you need to do) but really that is about it.

By clone you do mean actual cloning software and not manually copying/pasting files; yes?

Last edited by Bad 💀 Motha; Jul 5, 2016 @ 10:55pm

Filipino Fighting for Freedom! Jul 7, 2016 @ 5:46pm

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:
If it's a drive to drive clone; then there is no "effing" it up, cause you are leaving nothing out.

And since it's just games drive and not an OS drive, it's a little different (cause of the drive letter change up you need to do) but really that is about it.

By clone you do mean actual cloning software and not manually copying/pasting files; yes?

yes, i'd be using cloning software to do it. i would then assign the old drive letter to the new cloned drive.

i just wasn't sure if there were any registry entries or other weird things tying Steam to a specific hard drive, aside from the drive letter.

Bad 💀 Motha Jul 8, 2016 @ 1:19am

Yea the registry is pointing to "D drive" for any Apps installed there.
This is why after the clone, u manually swap the drive letters around, so the New Drive is now D Drive. Nothing else should require changing.

Last edited by Bad 💀 Motha; Jul 8, 2016 @ 1:20am

griffinroost Aug 20, 2016 @ 11:38am

Yeah I just did a similar thing and cloned my D drive where my games are and now I need to reinstall all of them, are you suggesting if I swap Drive letters say to like G and back it will recognize the installed games and save alot of downloading.