Need upgrade recommendations.

Laquer Head

Laquer Head

Well-Known Member
This whole process is way easier than your making it. Don't take that the wrong way, but I feel your overthinking things...this is extremely easy to do and will likely yield you satisfactory results with regards to system performance.
 
Ender Wiggins

Ender Wiggins

Member
No...it'll takes days how you're saying it. I have like a ton of 50GB games on here. And they aren't all from steam, and some are even CD games. I'm not worried about documents and pictures I already know that. I just have a lot of save data and videogames on my PC that'll have to reinstall.
 
Laquer Head

Laquer Head

Well-Known Member
Ender Wiggins said:
But no one is telling me how to do it or sharing a tutorial! So I don't even know where to start...
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Buy external hard drive...
drag/drop from your current hard drive to external drive...

Games can be reinstalled easily...via CD/DVD or download, steam,...etc
 
Darren

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Save files depend on the game, so that's something you'll have to look into depending on what games your worried about. If they're Steam games then they'll frequently backup saves to the Steam Cloud, meaning you'll have them even after you wipe it. Most other games will save to your My Documents folder, so just back up that entire folder and you're fine.

You need an external hard drive really to do what you want, or at least a flash drive to backup save games. All games on Steam you can always redownload, but backing them up is much quicker if you have access to an external hard drive.

Ender Wiggins said:
...Ok how many GB in the external hard drive?
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Well.... how many GB of stuff are you wanting to backup? You'll probably have to add it up yourself.
 
Ender Wiggins

Ender Wiggins

Member
I guess like a TB or 2?
So all I have to do is just literally move every game file I have? Like just take the entire "steamapps" and move it to an external hard drive?
 
Laquer Head

Laquer Head

Well-Known Member
Ender Wiggins said:
I guess like a TB or 2?
So all I have to do is just literally move every game file I have? Like just take the entire "steamapps" and move it to an external hard drive?
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You need to figure that out, we can't tell you... then you'd want an external that matches the size of your drive..or the amount of stuff you have to transfer.
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
You would basically have to find out where each game keeps its game saves and just back up that file. It may be a pain the butt for someone that has never done it before but for somebody that has been gaming for years and reinstalls windows every couple years or so, its pretty easy. With your specs, you shouldn't be having any issues really. More ram may help. May need some general maintenance done to the machine.
 
Darren

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Ender Wiggins said:
Windows 10 pro. @Darren But there are a lot of games that are not on Steam...ugh...I just don't understand.
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I don't understand what you don't understand.

Might be easiest to just take it to a shop and have them do it, although most places charge out the ass for data backup. You could just have them back up your data to an external hard drive, might give you a discount on the service if you buy the drive with them.

Windows 10 has a built in reset that performs a clean installation of Windows pretty much at the click of a button. There's even an option that lets you keep your files, although that usually just includes your Documents, Pictures, and stuff found in your user directory. Meaning your games and programs will be missing and need to be reinstalled/copied from your backup.
 
Laquer Head

Laquer Head

Well-Known Member
Ender Wiggins said:
Windows 10 pro. @Darren But there are a lot of games that are not on Steam...ugh...I just don't understand.
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Since your on Windows 10, and discussing this with @Darren your best bet, and easiest might be to utilize the "Reset This PC" function that is build into Windows 10.

Doing this process allows you to get back to a core start, and there is an option to 'keep personal folders/files'. This might be the best way to go for you, as I feel the other stuff we've mentioned may become too cumbersome for you on your own.
 
Darren

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Laquer Head said:
Since your on Windows 10, and discussing this with @Darren your best bet, and easiest might be to utilize the "Reset This PC" function that is build into Windows 10.

Doing this process allows you to get back to a core start, and there is an option to 'keep personal folders/files'. This might be the best way to go for you, as I feel the other stuff we've mentioned may become too cumbersome for you on your own.
Click to expand...

I do want to stress you will lose all games and programs, even with keeping your personal data.

You can also just do general system cleanup, we can advise on that and it's a lot easier IMO and won't remove any data. Was this a fresh installation of Windows 10 or an upgrade from Windows 8.1 or 7? If it's an install of 10 from the start then you're probably fine just doing a cleanup. If it's an upgrade then you might be having some issues giving you undesirable performance. You were never clear on what exactly was wrong with the machine, just that it "didn't act right." I've definitely seen some funky problems on upgraded machines that were resolved with a clean install but at this point I'm questioning whether it's worth the time and effort given how uncomfortable you seem with doing it.
 
Laquer Head

Laquer Head

Well-Known Member
Darren said:
I do want to stress you will lose all games and programs, even with keeping your personal data.

You can also just do general system cleanup, we can advise on that and it's a lot easier IMO and won't remove any data. Was this a fresh installation of Windows 10 or an upgrade from Windows 8.1 or 7? If it's an install of 10 from the start then you're probably fine just doing a cleanup. If it's an upgrade then you might be having some issues giving you undesirable performance. You were never clear on what exactly was wrong with the machine, just that it "didn't act right." I've definitely seen some funky problems on upgraded machines that were resolved with a clean install but at this point I'm questioning whether it's worth the time and effort given how uncomfortable you seem with doing it.
Click to expand...

Yup, thanks..
 
Ender Wiggins

Ender Wiggins

Member
Just a lot of problems with frame drops. And not reaching the max performance that it should. I mean this makes sense...I did not upgrade I took Windows 10 from a USB drive. I just don't understand how someone can remove all game data and then get it all back instantly. Because it took me like 5 hours to install 50 GBs worth of a game. Like it makes sense to just transfer every single file I have...but I would still have to reinstall everything right? So that would take forever. And it also sounds like I just backup the saves, which would work...but I still have to reinstall everything. I've looked up what you guys are saying a hundred times and I can't find anything where people completely clean their windows. You make sense that it should work, but you are not telling me exactly how...I don't know where to start or what to do. Like I need some sort of tutorial or instructions.
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Really is no tutorial or instructions. We've basically already told you how you need to proceed. Back up your game saves and any personal data. Reinstall windows, install any drivers needed, install all games transfer saved games back to original location. Then once everything is back on, you create a disk image and save it so you can restore within minutes instead of hours if a drive crashes.
 
Ender Wiggins

Ender Wiggins

Member
Ok...so what I'm getting here is to make a backup of everything on an external hard drive and then reboot windows and then extract all the the backup back to the rebooted windows 10 correct? will I be able to have ALL of my original games and saves back? (somewhat quickly?)
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Transferring data doesn't take that long, its reinstalling windows, drivers, and games/apps. I wouldn't transfer the full game to an external since it would have to reinstalled anyway. What would you have done if your hard drive crashed and you lost all your data? Gotta have a backup plan in place.
 
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