![How to change where steam installs games How to change where steam installs games](/uploads/1/2/6/1/126131364/446557644.jpg)
So you’re running out of hard drive space (maybe on that fast-but-tiny SSD of yours), and you need to move a few of your PC games to another hard drive. Don’t uninstall and re-download them! You can actually move your games to a new drive without having to wait hours to reinstall each one.
There are many ways to do this, but in my experience, most solutions fall into one of two categories. Here’s how to each method works.
- A way to change Steam download directory? Uninstall steam install steam, choose custom location, select your 2nd drive, install it there. Logout move over old files (or.
- Feb 7, 2018 - Thankfully, organizing your games is easy to do in Steam, and if. Steam directory to another drive without having to re-download all your.
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Option One: Create Symlinks with Steam Mover
Despite its name, Steam Mover is an awesome app that will move any game—Steam, Origin, or otherwise—and play it without re-installing. It does this by creating a symbolic link at the old location, so your computer thinks everything’s in the same place—but all that space-eating data really resides on another hard drive.
The steam games are on a Seperate drive more than likely. Well mine are. Just with the world saves and the mod paths are hard coded to be saved in the appdata/roaming folder. On the C: drive.
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Here’s how to use it:
- Download Steam Mover and start it up. It’s completely portable, so you don’t need to install anything—just run the EXE file.
- At the top of the window, select the folder where your game currently resides on the left. On the right, browse to where you’d like to move the game to. (If the folder doesn’t exist, you can create it now.)
- Select your game from the list and click the blue arrow at the bottom.
- Steam Mover will bring up a black command prompt window that shows you the progress of the copy. Let it run, and when it’s finished, your game should be in the new folder, with a “shortcut” in the original folder. You should be able to run it from Steam, Origin, or from that shortcut as if it never moved.
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That’s it. You can repeat the process with as many games as you want, and move them back at any time by re-opening Steam Mover and clicking the blue “left” arrow at the bottom to move them back.
You can also make the symlinks yourself, without Steam Mover’s help, but Steam Mover makes it incredibly simple.
Option Two: Move the Game and Direct Your Game Manager to the New Location
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If you’d prefer not to download extra software, you don’t have to—both Steam and Origin have ways to “detect” installed games after you’ve moved them. You just have to perform the right steps in the right order. If you’re using Steam:
- Create a folder in the new location where you’ll store your games. If you’re on Steam, you’ll need to do it through Steam. Head to Settings > Downloads > Steam Library Folders and click “Add Library Folder”.
- Navigate to your new Steam library folder and create a new folder within it called
steamapps
. Then, create a folder in steamapps calledcommon
. - Head to your current Steam folder and find the folder for the game you want to move. You’ll likely find it in
steamapps/common
. Copy the game’s folder, e.g. “Borderlands 2”, to the newsteamapps/common
folder you created in step 2. - Open Steam, right-click on the game you’re moving, and select “Delete Local Content”. This will uninstall the game from its original location.
- When that’s done, click the Install button to re-install the game. In the “Choose location” dropdown, choose the Steam folder on your new hard drive.
- Instead of re-downloading the game (which could take hours), Steam will detect the existing files there and make any necessary minor changes. When it’s done, you should be able to play the game as usual.
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If you’re moving an Origin game, the steps are very similar, but just a tad simpler:
- Open Windows Explorer and create a folder in the new location where you’ll store your games.
- Head to your current Origin folder and find the folder for the game you want to move. Copy it to the new location, and delete the old files.
- Open Origin and head to Origin > Application Settings > Advanced. Under “Downloaded Games”, click the “Change” button and direct it to the folder on your new hard drive. Don’t worry, this only affects newly-installed games, so your current library will not be affected.
- Return to the “My Games” view and click the Download button to re-install the game. Instead of re-downloading the game (which could take hours), Origin will detect the existing files there and make any necessary minor changes. When it’s done, you should be able to play the game as usual.
- If you want to install future games to your old hard drive, repeat step 3 with the old location.
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This method may not work as well for games installed without a manager like Steam or Origin, but for everything I tested, it worked like a charm.
The default download location on our Windows systems works well enough most of the time without a problem, but what if you want or need to change the location at the system level? With that in mind, today’s SuperUser Q&A post has some helpful advice for a frustrated reader.
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.
The Question
SuperUser reader Dr. John A Zoidberg wants to know how to change the Windows’ default download path:
I would like to keep my drive paths as clean as possible and C:Downloads is much nicer than C:UsersMynameDownloads. How can I stop Windows 10 from using the user name profile location by default?
How do you change Windows’ default download path?
The Answer
SuperUser contributors Techie007 and Charles Burge have the answer for us. First up, Techie007:
1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Create the folder you want to have as your new Downloads folder (i.e. C:Downloads)
3. Under This PC, right-click Downloads
4. Click Properties
5. Select the Location Tab
6. Click Move
7. Select the folder you made in Step 2
8. Once it has finished copying everything to the new folder, click OK to close the Properties Window
Followed by the answer from Charles Burge:
How To Change Steam Download Location On Computer
It is not Windows itself that downloads files, but rather its applications like web browsers or other network clients. If you are specifically talking about downloading files from the Internet, your web browser has a setting for the default download location. You can even set it to ask you each time where you want to put a file that you are about to download.
Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.
Steam Install Games To Different Drive
Image (Screenshot) Credit: Techie007 (SuperUser)