Steam Mover

[GTP]

Listening to the "Mike Tech Show" a couple of nights ago and he spoke about this little gem.
Steam Mover is able to move Steam games from on drive to another.
I know Fabs AutoBackup can backup/restore Steam games, but Steam Mover can actually move them to a different drive.
You just pick which games you want to move. It's portable as well, which I like.
Handy if you get a client with a large spinner with heaps of games that wants to use a smaller SSD.


I just tested it on my gaming box which has 1.4 terabytes of games. I moved about 800 gb's to a second drive with no issues.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

I have used this once on a customers gaming machine that we built. Worked great.

 

[phaZed]

You can do this from the steam app fyi, albeit, one game at a time.

 

[Your PCMD]

"It will NOT work on Windows XP."

Well that's a deal breaker for me. I'm being sarcastic BTW.

 

[G8racingfool]

Not to disparage the app or anything, but I've done this for years by just moving the steamapps/common/*gamename* folder to where I want it, 'uninstall' the game and then reinstall it and, when it asks for the install location I point it to the library folder that contains the newly copied game files. Takes about 2 minutes to verify everything's still there and away I go. Takes hardly any time at all unless you have hundreds of tiny games that you're moving. (Most modern games come in at ~20gb+ nowdays.)

 

[phaZed]

@G8racingfool Same here, trendy hipsters!

 

[GTP]

(Most modern games come in at ~20gb+ nowdays.)

Yes, the last game I bought - Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 - is 53 Gb's!

 

[Bryce W]

GTA5 is 70.6 GB

 

[GTP]

GTA5 is 70.6 GB

Soon chew up a 256GB SSD!

 

[Sky-Knight]

Why would you need an app to move a folder?

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Why would you need an app to move a folder?

If you just move the folder then the games won't run, unless you re-install the game and point it to the new location. Steam Mover creates junction points for you so there is no need to re-install. http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover

 

[G8racingfool]

Soon chew up a 256GB SSD!

I'm already looking to move to a 500GB+ SSD. I've got a 256 right now with maybe 6 games installed on it and it's mostly full.

 

[Sky-Knight]

No, you don't have to reinstall. You tell it to reinstall aim it at the folder it's in, and it discovered installed files and adds it to the inventory.

There's a .glob file somewhere, in the steam directory that contains all of this. So if the directory structure on the target is the same, you move the game installs, you install steam, then overwrite the installed Steam with the old machine's folder and boom, steam online.

I suppose if you do this enough you could benefit from automating it, but Steam was designed with portability in mind and has several articles out there with instructions on how to do with with Valve supported processes and tools.

*Edit* Further research indicates that Steam Mover was created by a former Valve employee. I'm not sure I buy into this because the way Valve development works, he'd have been compensated quite well for just making it part of Steam.

Oh wait... Steam supports libraries now, so you just make one on a new drive and click to move things...