I want to switch where my base Steam install directory is. If I do a fresh install of it on a fresh install of windows, will I be able to drop in my old downloads and have Steam recognize them via “Steam Library Folders”. Obviously I’d need to make the Steam library folder first, but after that, if I just copy over the old downloaded folder for the game… if Steam will recognize them and use that, or if I’ll need to do a full re-download?
I did that once, and it worked fine.
Don’t think you even need to create the structure, just need to tell steam where it is.
Awesome - thanks!
In my experience it doesn’t work to copy the install files into the new base Steam library location, but if you specify existing folders on other drives (one per drive) as library locations it should detect everything automatically.
I mean, it will still use existing files in the former scenario, but you have to manually attempt to install them, they won’t just show up as installed.
I believe once you run the game from the new location it will then automatically detect it as installed.
Right, but you have to do that individually for every title, whereas if you point it to folders on other drives it detects everything immediately.
You need to copy/move the acf files as well when you copy/move a game, they store your license information. Otherwise, Steam has no idea what the folders are until you try to install.
You should probably do the same with the workshop folder to not waste space.
You can actually have multiple steam drives on one PC. You can also move games between two by right clicking on the game in the steam app library, selecting properties and then going to the “local files” tab.
Yep, I have 5 steam drives now. But since I’m doing s new install and moving things around, I thought it’d be a good time to clean things up.
This is the correct answer. (I had the exact same problem last week.)
Yeah, it’s probably just a me thing since I intentionally limit how many Steam games I have installed at any given time. Once I get too much clutter there’s automatically stuff not getting played, so I just avoid it.
That’s true, it’s still fairly new and I had forgotten about it.
OK something is very, very wrong as I’ve lost all my save game files and it makes no sense whatsoever. So I’ll explain exactly what I did and hopefully you can help me fix this.
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Previously my main Steam Install was on my D: Drive - a mechnical hard drive. For new build I did a fresh Steam install on new SDD.
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I still have all my old drives, files, etc with new windows install. So for example, I made a new Steam directory and moved Frostpunk into it along with the .acf file.
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Additionally I copied over the folders from my old user appdata directory. Did same thing from “My Games” in Documents.
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Launch Frostpunk and it starts a quick “install last file” kinda thing, and then… no save games. All my progress is missing/gone.
Why? Is there some more game information I missed in the original default Steam directory?
I had this happen with Planet Coaster too, but with Planet Coaster it is much more upsetting. I had hundreds of hours of items and custom scenarios I designed - and they’re all gone.
I found another Steam ID data location under my userdata ID in Steam itself. Copied that over and I have my saves!
I just wish that worked with Planet Coaster too :(
YES! You’re my hero :)
Planet Coaster saves stuff in 6 different directories. 2 in different Userdata dir’s, another two in My Docs, two more in totally different Steam sub-directories, and now the one I had missed… one in “Saved Games”.
What’s even better as I would have loaded up Kingdom Come Deliverance and found that game’s saves missing too, but they’re in there as well.
Me too! Designing all that stuff was so painful on my carpal tunnel. Felt like I’d just blown it.
Aren’t we glad we got rid of the My Games folder (and equivalent) that was easily put on Syncthing or Dropbox or whatever for the free game of “find the folders you want to backup”?
At least some OSs have soft links to keep everything in the same place.
I don’t think there’s ever been a point in the history of Windows where game developers all consistently used the same folders for anything.