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How to Move Steam Games to another Drive? Easy Methods

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How to move steam games to another drive? Steam is a video game digital distribution platform formed by Valve Corporation. It was launched in September 2003 as a way for Valve to give automatic updates to their games but eventually expanded to include non-Valve games from third-party publishers.

You can browse the latest and most popular games on Steam. You can download or buy the game you like. Various PC gamers download a lot of games through Steam.

However, they may face some issues, such as steam not opening, unable to move steam games to another drive, or steam disk write error while installing/updating. Among the difficulties they battled with steam, many users ask how to move steam games to another drive on the Internet.

At this time, some people may be involved: why do you need to move steams games to another drive? To get the answers to the question and find practical solutions, you may continue to read this article.

How To Move Steam Games To Another Drive
How To Move Steam Games To Another Drive

Why Do You Move Steam Games to Different Drive 

There are two main reasons that users need to move steam games to another drive.

The drive that has steam installed runs out of free space

By default, Steam will drop the game files into your C drive, but the C drive is efficiently run out of space due to various installation files and desktop files. Slowly, the C drive will be filled up, or the partition bar gets red. To bypass this situation, users would like to move steam games to a larger partition.

Users want to move the games to SSD to enjoy faster speed and better performance

Moving and installing games to an SSD can reduce the load times because the data transfer speed of SSDs is significantly higher than that of HDDs. You can test the speed of SSD and HDD through a third-party disk benchmarking tool.

The games will load quicker if you move steam games to SSD. So that’s the reason why some users need to move steam games to another drive.

According to the earlier reasons, you should know the reasons for moving steam games to another drive. Well, how to move steam games to a different drive? If you think that moving steam games to another drive is important for you, you can follow the steps below to start moving steam games.

How To Move Steam Games To Another Drive Without Redownloading
How To Move Steam Games To Another Drive Without Redownloading

How to Move Steam Games to another Drive?

Move Games among the built-in Move Install Folder Feature 

Steam’s embedded feature allows you to move individual games to a new library or drive. Want to learn the detailed steps?

With the Move Install Folder feature, you can move individual games to a new library or drive, but if you want to move multiple games to another drive at once, you will require the assistant of tools like Steam Library Manager and Steam Mover.

Steam also provides you to have multiple download folders via Add Library Folder, which means you can store the games to another drive by adding a steam library on the drive you want.

After creating a new steam library folder on another drive, you can quickly move steam games to another drive without re-downloading them via the Move Install Folder feature. Make sure your Steam is up to date for the below instructions to work.

Now let’s see the detailed steps toward the question of how to move steam games to another drive without re-downloading.

  • Enter Steam, and locate to Settings > Downloads > Steam Library Folders > Add Library Folder.
  • Then pick a different drive and create a new folder. Name it and then hit OK and SELECT to continue.
  • Then you will see the folder listed in the Steam Library folders list. You can now close this window. Once you have built the new path, all future installations can be installed there.
  • Hit LIBRARY to pen your Games library, and right-click on the game you want to move, and then choose Properties.
  • Switch to the Local Files tab and hit the button Move Install Folder.
  • Hit on Move Folder, and it will start moving steam games to another drive. Fulfilment time will depend on the size of the game.

You can try this method to move steam games to another drive one by one. However, if you want to move multiple games to another drive, you may try the following ways.

Move Steam Games to Different Drive with Steam Library Manager

Steam Library Manager is a tool that can assist you to manage Steam libraries. The main interface of Steam Library Manager lists all the Libraries on your PC and games available in each of these libraries. Steam Library Manager can help you copy, move, or backup your games.

Steam Library Manager allows you to drag and drop the games from one library to another at ease. You can use the Task Manager section to go in batches. The detailed steps about moving steam games to another drive with Steam Library Manager are shown below.

  • Download Steam Library Manager through the official website.
  • On the main interface of Steam Library Manager, you can view the created steam library and what games they stored. Drag the game to the library you need to move it to.
  • Locate to Task Manager Tab. The games you are working to move will be listed here. You can move multiple games and then hit the Start button to proceed steam games to another drive.
  • When the games are moving, you will detect a log getting generated. If there is a difficulty, it will make it clear to you.

Steam Library Manager makes it simple to move Steam games. You can download the Steam Library Manager from its official site and have a try if you don’t understand how to transfer a steam game to another drive.

Try using Steam Library Manager to move steam games to another drive or backup Steam games now.

Move Your Entire Steam Install

You can move your whole Steam to another drive, which will move all your Steam games to another drive. If you don’t know how to move steam to another drive, you can lead to the following steps.

  • Close Steam and locate your Steam folder via Windows File Explorer. The path could be C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam.
  • Copy and paste your Steam folder to the fresh drive.
  • Rename the old folder and leave it in the original directory as a backup — or you can remove it later.
  • Run the Steam.exe from the new location and build a new shortcut.

To move steam to another drive is very easy. After it is finished, you can check if your games can be launched as usual.

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