How to Move Steam Games to Another Drive

With the release of Steam's storage management tools, you no longer have to download terabytes of games that are already installed. Moving your installed games without spending days redownloading is a simple matter of adding a new library folder, then shifting games from point to point. This runs risk-free when moving files inside Steam.

Set Up the Destination Library

Before shuffling any games, you need to tell Steam where the destination drive is. One method is to add a new Steam Library folder at the root of the drive, to ease moving the game there. A PCMag guide says the in-client UI natively finds any drive not already listed as a Steam library location, when you tap the plus icon on the left; no extra setup needed. Steam typically puts games under a steamapps folder, so your target drive folder might look like G:\steamapps or similar.

Once the library folder is established, it will appear in the Storage pane under Storage in the main menu, where you will select or deselect which games live there later. Letting Steam map the destination in advance is crucial to preserving local save files, avoiding a redownload, and minimizing potential issues with folder nesting if Steam's directory hierarchy doesn't match the actual location of the game files.

Move the Installed Game Inside Steam

The actual game shift is tellingly simple. You move them in groups or one at a time, by selecting installed games and clicking Move in the main client's Storage screen,; no need to jump between screens or reselect the target. A single click for each game, or handling all ATLUS RPGs under one confirmation. Select a group of games, click through, choose the move destination, done. [These moves typically retain folders, local files, and Steam] Desktop shortcuts are usually kept up to date with the new library.

Verify the Files After the Move

The pickout for verifying the integrity of a local game is a lil' further over in the same Library menu. Pick [Your Game]: Properties: Local Files: Verify, and Steam will checksum that your previously downloaded files match their.bz2 or checksum'd counterparts. It might download some bytes to get authenticated, fingerprinted content right, [but it's not a full reinstall of the full game.] Protip: Since Steam likely had your files before you moved them: if those Verification dialogs weren't popping like they did under C:\Program Files, hit Properties: Local Files: Browse to make sure those files are actually there, in the library location where the in-client UI says they are now.

Why Hand-Moving the Folder Breaks Recognition

A common failure case when moving a Steam library: moving the folder itself in File Explorer, then telling Steam where to look like you did with the first part of this process - but having Steam not recognize the game after that. Clues: The game looks grayed out or has no install folder, so appears uninstalled in Steam even when the files are right there. That's from Steam failing to recognize the folder structure as the game in question in the Library it now points to, after moving the whole game folder manually.

Recovery if Steam Does Not Recognize the Game

If you find yourself on this failure path, there is one fallback. If the game files lie intact where Steam now expects them, along with its own acf file, the library is recognized as complete for that game. .acf Files tell Steam it's a game, so when you've moved a game folder along with the accompanying .acf in Steam\steamapps, Steam finds it.

To sum up: Steam uses metadata to recognize games in library locations. When you move the folder in File Explorer instead of moving it through the in-client Library UI, this crucial metadata gets disconnected; the acf isn't where the metadata expects it to be, now that the folder is over here.

Full-Steam Relocation Only If the Client Itself is Moving

There's one other note: when you move the client and library location to another drive or folder altogether, it's not the same as moving one installed game out of the main Steam library. The Steam installation is what points to its own game library, and reshuffling the whole Steam root after dismounting the discs preserves that. It differs from the process above, because the whole client is being moved.

For more Steam guides and how-to's (or maybe to cut down on your Steam library size by de-installing that 20,000-hour Minecraft sandbox), hit Steam Support directly or unearth the Steam Community guides.