Moving a Steam Installation and Games

How do I change the default installation path for my games?

Games are installed to the following folder by default:

C:\Program Files\Steam (x86)\SteamApps\Common

You can create an alternate location on any drive, which you can choose in the future when installing games.

1. Navigate to your Steam client ‘Settings’ menu.
2. Select ‘Steam Library Folders’ from the ‘Downloads’ tab.

How do I move my existing Steam Installation?

Important:

Please ensure that you have your Steam login name and password before following this procedure. Also ensure that your account is linked to your current email address, so that you can reset your password if necessary.

It is not recommended that you install Steam to an external hard drive, due to potential performance issues.

Warning:

It is highly recommended that you create a backup of your SteamApps folder before attempting this process. If there is a problem in this process and you do not have a backup of your games or the SteamApps folder, it will be necessary to reinstall the games individually. Please see the Using the Steam Backup Feature topic.

The following instructions are a simple way to move your Steam installation along with your games:

1. Exit the Steam client application.
2. Browse to the Steam installation folder for the Steam installation you would like to move (C:\Program Files\Steam by default).
3. Delete all of the files and folders except the SteamApps & Userdata folders and Steam.exe
4. Cut and paste the whole Steam folder to the new location, for example: D:\Games\Steam\
5. Launch Steam and log into your account.

Steam will briefly update and then you will be logged into your account. For installed games, verify your game cache files and you will be ready to play. All future game content will be downloaded to the new folder (D:\Games\Steam\SteamApps\ in this example)

If you encounter any errors during the move process or when Steam is launched from the new location, it may be necessary to perform a more thorough process:

1. Exit the Steam client application.
2. Browse to the Steam installation folder for the Steam installation (continuing the from the last section example, this would be the new location of D:\Games\Steam\.
3. Move the SteamApps folder from the Steam installation folder to your desktop.
4. Review the Uninstalling Steam topic for instructions to uninstall Steam (this must be done to remove your old Steam installation settings from the Windows Registry).
5. Review the Installing Steam topic for instructions to re-install Steam to the desired location.
6. Move the SteamApps folder into the new Steam installation folder to copy all of your downloaded game content, settings, and saved games to the new location.
7. Start Steam and log in to your existing Steam account to confirm that the move was successful.
8. For installed games, verify your game cache files and you will be ready to play.

Note about Save Games

If you are moving your Steam installation to a new hard drive and want to keep game saves/profiles for third party games that are not saved on Steam Cloud most of these can be found in your Documents folder:

\Documents\[username]\My Games\. Moving this folder to the same location on your new hard drive will maintain your saves/profiles.

Steam files on windows

I had 2 hard drive set up. The bigger HD has started to fail. I have Dota installed on the good hard drive. However when it updates the update file tries to download on the faulty HD.

Ive made the good HD into the default folder, gone into the download folder and deleted the half downloaded update. But when the update starts again it puts the files on the bad HD.

Any way to set where steam will download an update file?

Steam always downloads updates on the drive that the game is installed on, unless there isn’t enough free space on that drive for the temporary files Steam needs to construct during the update, in which case it will use whatever space is available.

If you make more space on the good hard drive, the update should start to download there if you make enough.

Do you have enough space on the good drive? I remember Valve updated Steam to let game updates go to the next Steam folder if you don’t have enough space for the update on the current installation drive.

Steam will now use library folders on other drives to download game updates if the primary drive doesn’t have enough space left

. I have discovered a problem where if you have MOVED the folder, the updates will still acumulate in the old install paths’ Steam Library drive location.

This is remedied by a full install, or NOT using the built in Steam Move feature. Simply copy the data folder, uninstall, then re-install after moving the folder back. It should auto discover and solve future patch issues to boot.

Not «necro posting» as this comes up first in google search.

. I have discovered a problem where if you have MOVED the folder, the updates will still acumulate in the old install paths’ Steam Library drive location.

This is remedied by a full install, or NOT using the built in Steam Move feature. Simply copy the data folder, uninstall, then re-install after moving the folder back. It should auto discover and solve future patch issues to boot.

Not «necro posting» as this comes up first in google search.

. I have discovered a problem where if you have MOVED the folder, the updates will still acumulate in the old install paths’ Steam Library drive location.

This is remedied by a full install, or NOT using the built in Steam Move feature. Simply copy the data folder, uninstall, then re-install after moving the folder back. It should auto discover and solve future patch issues to boot.

Not «necro posting» as this comes up first in google search.

Thank you, I was getting so god awful sick of reading years and years worth of replies to these posts saying.

«It always downloads to the install folder»
«Check you task manager/resource manger/etc.. «
«Do you have enough space»

OMG why do people do this on literally every question anyone ever asks? Do you ever go to the mechanic and say «My car doesn’t have any oil» and they say «No, cars have oil»

I’ve just bought a new laptop last week, after 5 years away.

I have a separate external hard drive with all the games I have downloaded, but I also bought an SSD and installed that too, so I had three hard drives in total.

I’ve moved Windows to the SSD, naturally, and kept the games as they are on the external drive. New downloads I’ve pointed to download to that external drive as default.

A couple of games that take ages to start, for example, 7 Days to Die, I simply downloaded to the SSD. I’ve had one update pick up since then and it’s gone onto the SSD as it should.

What I would say is to not piss around with moving files manually. Backup any saves, then delete the game files from the drive you no longer want it on. Reinstall it where you want, they manuall move the backed up save to where it should be.

By keeping things as clean as this, and letting Steam do the work, it ensures it doesn’t get waylaid downloading elsewhere.

Hope this helps.

Yes you can change the location easily.

Necroing this post to describe a way how to consolidate the steam download folders into one location for example on different disk in case you have multiple library folders, without messing around with Steam Client.
By using this, you do not need to worry anymore what happens when you move a game between library folders.

The trick is to use Symbolic Links (a feature widely known in Linux, but not so much in Windows) to let each «downloading» folder of the various Steam Library folders point to the same, centralized location/drive.

Example : Games in Steam Library folders on smaller SSDs in C:\Steam and D:\Steam, the desired central download location on the slower but bigger HDD E:\SteamDownloads.

Be sure you have all current downloads finished and applied to their games (as you will temporarily delete the downloading folders).
Then exit the Steam Client completely and open an Administrative Command Prompt.

md E:\SteamDownloads
C:
cd \Steam\steamapps
rd /s /q downloading
mklink /D downloading E:\SteamDownloads
D:
cd \Steam\steamapps
rd /s /q downloading
mklink /D downloading E:\SteamDownloads

This folder redirection is transparent to Steam Client and Windows Explorer — the only difference is a little arrow in the folder icon.

Regardless which . \steamapps\downloading folder is selected, it will always end up in E:\SteamDownloads

Yes you can change the location easily.

Necroing this post to describe a way how to consolidate the steam download folders into one location for example on different disk in case you have multiple library folders, without messing around with Steam Client.
By using this, you do not need to worry anymore what happens when you move a game between library folders.

The trick is to use Symbolic Links (a feature widely known in Linux, but not so much in Windows) to let each «downloading» folder of the various Steam Library folders point to the same, centralized location/drive.

Example : Games in Steam Library folders on smaller SSDs in C:\Steam and D:\Steam, the desired central download location on the slower but bigger HDD E:\SteamDownloads.

Be sure you have all current downloads finished and applied to their games (as you will temporarily delete the downloading folders).
Then exit the Steam Client completely and open an Administrative Command Prompt.

md E:\SteamDownloads
C:
cd \Steam\steamapps
rd /s /q downloading
mklink /D downloading E:\SteamDownloads
D:
cd \Steam\steamapps
rd /s /q downloading
mklink /D downloading E:\SteamDownloads

This folder redirection is transparent to Steam Client and Windows Explorer — the only difference is a little arrow in the folder icon.

Regardless which . \steamapps\downloading folder is selected, it will always end up in E:\SteamDownloads

THANK YOU so much for this, i was looking for exactly this workaround. Since my tiny 120 gb SSD always has problems containing both the game itself and the wonky way that steam downloads take up 40 gb, even though the download itself is 5gb

Steam files on windows

The Steam Link app is now available for Windows 10. A wired network is strongly recommended.

Any advantage to using the desktop software vs the Steam link hardware?

Any advantage to using the desktop software vs the Steam link hardware?

if you can’t find the hardware link (long out of production) you can load this on a windows 10 based htpc, or on an older laptop that can’t run the game but can handle the streaming.

Wow, this flew completely under the radar! Any plans to publish it in the Windows Store?

if you can’t find the hardware link (long out of production) you can load this on a windows 10 based htpc, or on an older laptop that can’t run the game but can handle the streaming.

I think a better question is, any point in using this standalone app instead of regular Steam?

How is this not Big News? I mean this should be on the Front Store Page.

Any plans for a Linux version?

I ran it using Wine on Linux. It runs and detects the machine. Pairs fine as well.
Even detected my Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback 2 Joystick that was still plugged in.

I haven’t tested if

1. if it works on ANOTHER machine, I connected from the same one.
2. if controllers would actually work. I have an Xbox and Steam Controller.
3. if GPU decoding works or not — very important bit. No idea what the application uses on Windows for video decoding. No idea if Wine even supports any form of that.