Steam is the Internet gaming platform created by Valve software. Users can purchase games online, download and play them right away. It is becoming increasingly popular because it provides a solid copy protection mechanism that is integrated into the Steam platform. It is not that bad for customers either because Steam games usually do not make use of other copy protection mechanisms that force users to uninstall software or have sometimes troubles identifying the original DVD.
Steam requires a big fast hard drive if used regularly. This is especially true for all those online games like Counter Strike Source, Team Fortress 2 or Age of Conan that you can purchase at Steam. New maps, patches and multimedia content fill the hard drive over time.
If you are almost at the capacity you might want to move Steam to another hard drive. It could also be that you purchased a faster hard drive and want to make sure that Steam is running on the fastest hardware for maximum effectiveness. Thankfully though moving Steam to another hard drive is not as complicated as it sounds. These are the steps you need to follow:
- Exit Steam
- Copy the steamapps folder that contains all the game data like saves and downloaded contents to another location. The folder is usually located in the Steam root directory.
- Uninstall Steam
- Install Steam on the new hard drive
- Copy the steamapps folder into the new location
- Start Steam. Steam will automatically recognize the steamapps contents and make them available again
The process should not take that long as all the big game related files do not have to be downloaded again. Another unofficial version is floating around the Internet. According to it only the file clientregistry.blob has to be deleted on the computer system. It is after that only a matter of moving the complete Steam folder to the desired location. Steam will automatically repair the shortcuts and entries so that it can be used from that location as usual.
Move Steam To Another Hard Drive
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