Reinstalling Steam and associated games on different HDD

[Shadowhunter]

My tiny main harddrive (80GB) is full so I want to reinstall Steam and all my games associated with it (CS:S and the Orange Box) onto my storage drive. Is this as simple as uninstalling and reinstalling onto the other harddrive? What about saved games? I still have the game cases and everything for the key's.

 

[Droogie]

Steam automatically saves all of your games/keys when you install them the first time. If you want to reinstall just boot onto that drive and install steam, and it will automatically start downloading the game files, or you can put the game discs, which will be much faster to install (if that's what you mean).

 

[mrjack]

I've done this a few times:
1)Copy the .gcf files from ...\Steam\steamapps\ to the HDD you want to use in the future.

2)In order to copy your saved games you can go to ...\Steam\steamapps\your account name here\the game\the game\ and copy the SAVE folder. For example: ...\Steam\steamapps\mrjack\Portal\portal\. This folder can then be copied back into the new installation, but be sure to run the game once after the re-install in order to create the folder structure.

3)Uninstall Steam and install it where you want it

4)Copy the .gcf files you copied earlier into the new ...\Steam\steamapps\ folder

5)Run Steam and the games should show in the Games menu to be Installed


This has worked well for me in the past, however I did encounter that when I did this on Vista 64-bit I had to download the entire HL2 .gcf file again. I suspect that this was due to Steam downloading a version optimized for 64-bit OS's.

 

[oregon]

Yup, it remembers what games you have and lets you redownload whenever you want. And at least for multiplayer games (TF2!) it remembers all your stats and settings. Steam is great.

 

[epidemik]

Soon, (not sure how soon), theyre gonna make remember all your settings and saved games and other things. Ill look for the article where i read that.