It’s a common scenario. You’ve just bought yourself a swanky new hard drive (SSD, I’m guessing) and want to transfer your biggest games to it so you can say goodbye forever to horrendous loading times. But uninstalling and reinstalling the games again could take hours, especially when you take into account the fact that you’ll probably need to re-download them as well.
A game on Steam can be copied onto another computer by copying all the files. With multiple people, though: Everybody has to download the game from the. Can I download steam games externally on another person's computer, and then transfer the file to my own? (I own the games on steam.) Update Cancel. Yes u can log on to steam on another persons computer. Backup the game the bacup game file will be in. Backup section in steam folder. So copy the backup files. Copy to your system. How to Download PC Games with Steam. Anyone having trouble downloading Steam? Well, you have come to the right place. This simple step to step process will get you playing in maybe an hour. Get a free Steam account. If you don't already. How to move Steam Games to another PC or Drive. July 24, 2015. Copy them to your USB drive or whatever the mode you are using to transfer files to PC #2. Install Steam client on the PC #2. It might download a few small files or Start the game without re-downloading the entire gigabytes of data. Enjoy playing!
Transferring game files from one computer to another? RedRoach Follow. Forum Posts: 1402. If I were able to download the files there on a laptop, is it possible to simply transfer those files onto my gaming pc and have steam recognize them when it goes to install my new game? When you open Steam on the 'new'/other computer, the games.
The solution is to move your installed PC games over directly instead of reinstalling them. Sadly, it’s not quite as simple as just copying and pasting them where you want, but it isn’t too much more complicated either.
The Manual Method
Whether you’re looking to move a game that’s on Steam, Origin or Uplay, you can do it without third-party software. We’ll use Steam as an example because it’s the most popular platform, but the same principle applies across other platforms as well.
First, go to the game’s installation directory and cut and paste it to where you want it on the new hard drive. (If you’re pasting a Steam game, make sure it’s in the folders “steamapps/common,” as Steam automatically looks for those subdirectories. So paste the games to, for example, “My Games/steamapps/common” or “Steam Games/steamapps/common.”)
Once you’ve done that, uninstall the game from your PC using Steam by navigating to it in your Steam library, right-clicking it and clicking “Delete Local Content.”
Go to your Steam download settings, (In Steam, click Steam at the top left -> Settings -> Downloads.) click “Steam Library Folders -> Add Library Folder,” then select the directory where you pasted your game. (Don’t include the “steamapps/common” part here, as Steam will apply that automatically.)
Close the Settings window, go to your (uninstalled) game in your Steam library, then click install and select the new install directory you just added to Steam. Because all the game files are there, Steam will skip the download process and get on with installing your game to the new drive.
The exact details will vary, but you can do pretty much the same thing – copy and paste the game, uninstall it, then reinstall it without re-downloading – on Uplay, Origin, etc.
Use Steam Mover
Alternatively, you can use an extremely lightweight but useful little tool called Steam Mover. The way Steam Mover works is by moving all the game files to a location of your choice while leaving a Junction Point in the original location. This means you shouldn’t delete the game folders that get left at the game’s original location, as that’ll delete the junction point, and Steam won’t be able to find them when you try and run them. Despite the name, you can also use Steam Mover for Origin, GOG, Uplay or other games – and any other programs and files that you want for that matter!
You can download Steam Mover here. (You need to scroll down quite a bit to the ‘Download’ subhead.) Once you’ve done that, extract and install it wherever you like.
Open Steam Mover, and it should automatically detect and list all the Steam games in your library. If not, click the three dots next to “Steam Apps Common Folder” to manually find your Steam library on your hard drive, then select it and click “Refresh.”
Next, click the three dots under “Alternative Folder” in Steam Mover to select the location that you want to move your Steam games to (presumably, somewhere on your swanky new hard drive).
Next, with your games listed, select all the ones you want to move by holding Ctrl while clicking each one so they’re all highlighted. Once you’ve done that, click the blue, right-pointing arrow at the bottom of the window to move all your selected games to the new drive. A command prompt window will show up, speeding through all the files as it moves them. When the command prompt closes, and you see the blue arrows for each game in the right-hand column, the job is complete.
Steam Download Game Files From Another Computer Windows 10
Conclusion
Being able to move your installed PC games easily between hard drives is a handy skill, not only because it saves time, but because it potentially saves you gigabytes upon gigabytes of frustrating re-downloads. If you have caps on your downloads, or your connection gets throttled if you do too much downloading in a short space of time, then this could save you a lot of headaches!
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Steam has a built-in system for making a backup of its game files, so you don’t have to re-download a full game every time you uninstall it and want to play again later. But like a lot of Steam’s features, it hasn’t been updated in quite a while, and frankly it often manages to break the game restoration process anyway. On top of that, it’s slow, it’s clunky, and you can do better on your own.
Manually copying the files out of Steam’s game folder, then copying them back when you’re ready to play again, is much faster and more reliable. Steam’s caching system means that doing it yourself has no disadvantage versus the program’s integrated tool. If you’d like to back up your game files separately, especially to an external drive for archiving a large, 100GB+ collection or saving space on your primary system backup, here’s how to do it the easy way.
Step One: Find the Game Files
Fileplanet
Find your standard Steam game installation folder. By default in Windows, this is located in:
In macOS, open the Finder and choose Go > Go to Folder from the menu bar, entering this path:
And in Linux-based operating systems, it’s in the following your local user directory:
This folder is divided into sub-folders, one for each game installed under Steam’s master game list. Most of them share the same name as their respective game, but some use alternate titles or abbreviations—for example, Age of Empires II HD Edition is shortened to “Age2HD.”
![Copy steam games between computers Copy steam games between computers](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sQSIb0ma9AQ/hqdefault.jpg)
Remember, if you’ve set a custom game folder in Steam, your games will be installed elsewhere.
Step Two: Back Up the Games
To back up the games in the Steam common folder, just copy and paste them into another folder.
That’s it. Really, it’s that simple. Ideally, you want them to be on another storage drive, either internal or external, because having two copies of the same game on a single drive isn’t particularly useful. I keep a dedicated game partition on my external backup drive, just so I don’t have to re-download 30 gigabytes of data every time I want to play Team Fortress 2.
Now, right-click and uninstall the game in Steam to remove it from your primary drive. If your game sits in your backup folder for more than a few months, you’ll probably have to download an update to it…but that’s a few hundred megabytes at most, perhaps a gigabyte or two. Compared to almost 80 gigabytes for DOOM, it’s a great saving in both time and bandwidth.
Step Three: Restore the Games
Restoring the games is also easy: first, copy the game folders from your backup location back into the Steam/steamapps/common directory you found in Step One. (You might have to delete the original folder, since sometimes there are a few left over files even after a game is uninstalled.) Once that’s done, open Steam itself.
Click on the Library tab, then find one of the games you just restored to your primary Steam folder. It’s uninstalled at the moment; click “Install Game.” Make sure that it’s set to install in the same folder that you just restored your game files to.
Now here’s the magic part: before Steam begins the “download” process, it will double-check the location that it’s assigned to install the game files. Steam examines the game folder, “discovers” the files are already there, and skips the actual download for any files it doesn’t need to retrieve from the server.
Steam will restore the game in a few seconds to a few minutes. If there aren’t any major updates needed, you’re ready to play right away.
Don’t Forget Your Save Files!
There isn’t a standard location for games to put their save files. Depending on what you’re playing, your save file might be somewhere in the My Documents or My Games folder, or it could be in the game data folder you moved around in the steps above, or in the application data folders. It might be saved on the game developer’s cloud server or with Steam’s Cloud service, or in a dozen other places.
The point is, the game installation files you backed up might not also include the game save files that actually represent your personal playtime. If you’re backing up your games to access them later, do a quick Google search for your game save location to make sure you have those files protected as well.
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