Games after Windows 7 Reinstall?

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gyking94

gyking94

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May 28, 2014
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Hello, my HDD has 2 partitions: C/ for OS and D/ for games and multimedia. I want to re-install Windows 7 OS on C/, but Steam, Origin and other games are installed in D/. What will happen to all my games after the install? Will I have to re-download all of them? I put them on D/ because the system runs faster that way since all I have to do over time is defragment C/ only, not the entire HDD.
 
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house70
The new OS install will not know where the game files are located until you tell it so. The Steam, Origin and other clients will have to be installed, then they will have to be pointed to the actual location of the game files. A lot of games need to be reinstalled because their respective registry entries are non-existent after a clean OS install.
As a precaution I would do a backup of said game files on D/ or another drive, just to be able to quickly re-install the games from the backup (instead of having to download them again) in case Steam (or Origin) can not use the old location. I don't use Origin, but Steam client has an option to backup the game files on a separate drive, and I have used that several times to re-install games...
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house70

house70

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The new OS install will not know where the game files are located until you tell it so. The Steam, Origin and other clients will have to be installed, then they will have to be pointed to the actual location of the game files. A lot of games need to be reinstalled because their respective registry entries are non-existent after a clean OS install.
As a precaution I would do a backup of said game files on D/ or another drive, just to be able to quickly re-install the games from the backup (instead of having to download them again) in case Steam (or Origin) can not use the old location. I don't use Origin, but Steam client has an option to backup the game files on a separate drive, and I have used that several times to re-install games that got corrupted or got lost for whatever reason. Very handy option; I would assume Origin has something similar.
 
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gyking94

gyking94

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So I can run the Steam setup file and choose the same location (D/) and my games will be detected? Are you sure that would work?
 
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house70

house70

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Like I said, I have used the backup method before with success; I have never used the method you described, that's why I put in that recommendation. In case your suggestion doesn't work you can always reinstall the games from the backup drive in a matter of minutes instead of spending time re-downloading everything again.
 
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