How To Download Steam Games To An External Hard Drive

Here s an example of how to move the steam installation between two hard drives.

How to download steam games to an external hard drive. Moving your steam games around is trickier than you may think. If for whatever reason you need to move steam games from one drive. Click add library folder select the drive you want to create the library folder on and click new folder. To copy it just literally drag the whole thing to your external drive then go grab a beverage. On the next window that opens click ok and do not change the name of the folder that steam has set.

Log out and exit steam. Select the downloads category and click the steam library folders button. Open library choose the game you want to move right click it and select properties. Move game to external drive. Valve s download platform is less flexible than you may think.

Allow the game to finish downloading and play it. On the main install window click next and the game will begin to download. C program files steam delete all of the files and folders except the steamapps folder and steam exe. In file explorer on windows 10 you need to go to the location of your existing steam games library. Open the choose location for install dropdown and select your external drive.

To do this in steam click steam settings. Open steam then click steam settings downloads steam library folders add library folder choose the folder on the external hard drive. Navigate to the folder where steam is installed by default.