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This tip is about the how to Transfer Installed PC Games Between Hard Drives. So read this free guide, How to Transfer Installed PC Games Between Hard Drives step by step. If you have query related to same article you may contact us.
How to Transfer Installed PC Games Between Hard Drives – Guide
SSDs have gotten bigger, but so have games – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare now tops out at over 200GB, which doesn’t leave room for much more on a modestly sized drive. If you’re willing to give up some of those super fast loading times, you can move some of your games to a secondary hard drive with more space without redownloading them. Some game clients, such as Steam and EA’s Origin, have features that allow you to move your games from one location to another. Others, like the Epic Games Store, require a bit of finesse to move a game’s files around. Here it is how to do it on the most popular launchers.
How to Move installed PC games between hard drives
the manual method
If you want to move a game to Steam, Origin, or Uplay, you can do so without third-party software. We use Steam as an example because it is the most popular platform, but the same principle applies to other platforms as well.
First, go to the game’s installation directory and cut and paste it to the desired location on the new hard drive. (If you are including a Steam game, make sure it is in the steamapps/common folders, as Steam will automatically look for these subdirectories. For example, add the games to “My games/steamapps/common” or “Steam games/steamapps/ in general.”)
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 Steam download settings (in Steam, click Steam -> Settings -> Downloads in the top left corner.) Click “Steam Library Folder -> Add Library Folder” and select the directory where you want to save the added game. (Don’t include the “steamapps/common” part here, as Steam automatically enforces this.)
Close the settings window, go to your (uninstalled) game in your Steam library, click Install and select the new installation directory you just added to Steam. Since all game files are present, Steam will skip the download process and proceed with installing the game on the new drive.
The exact details vary, but you can do pretty much the same thing – copy and paste the game, uninstall and reinstall it without re-downloading it – in Uplay, Origin, etc.
Using the Steam Mover
Alternatively, you can use an extremely lightweight but useful little tool called the Steam Mover. The way Steam Mover works is to move all game files to a location of your choosing while keeping a connection point at the original location. This means that you should not delete the game folders that remain in the original location of the game, as this will delete the connection point and Steam will not be able to find them when you try to run them. Despite the name, you can also use Steam Mover for Origin, GOG, Uplay or any other game – and any other program and file you like!
You can download Steam Mover here. (You’ll have to scroll down a bit to the “Download” subhead.) Once you’ve done that, extract and install wherever you want.
Open Steam Mover and it should automatically detect and list all Steam games in your library. Otherwise, click on the three dots next to “Steam Apps Common Folder” to manually locate your Steam library on your hard drive, select it, and click “Update”.
Then click on the three dots under “Alternative Folder” in Steam Mover to select the location you want to move your Steam games to (probably somewhere on your new hard drive).
Then, with your games listed, select all the games you want to move by holding ctrl while clicking on each one so that they are all highlighted. Once you’ve done that, click the blue right-pointing arrow at the bottom of the window to move all selected games to the new drive. A command prompt window will appear, scrolling through all the files as they are moved. When the command prompt closes and you see the blue arrows for each game in the right column, the job is done.
Final note
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