Running Steam from an external HDD

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cwnicol

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Jun 14, 2012
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I currently have a desktop PC with an SSD as a boot drive and a secondary HDD on which I have installed Steam and my games library (alongside my miscellaneous media/pictures etc.). I'm being forced to downsize to a laptop and plan to simply remove my secondary HDD, stick it in a USB3.0 hard drive enclosure and use it as an external hard drive.

Providing I keep the drive letter the same will I encounter any issues if I simply open my steam folder on the drive and run steam.exe (or whatever it happens to be)? eg. will all my games still be in my library/run ok etc.
 
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Kademlia

Kademlia

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Sep 16, 2013
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The best way to transfer steam files is to take the steamapps and userdata folders and the steam.exe and move those to a backup folder on the same drive. Do an uninstall of the steam program through the regular uninstall method in windows. After that move to the new computer. Install steam onto the same external into the same spot if you want it doesn't matter. Then copy those folders and steam.exe into the new steam install.

Do not ask me why you backup the steam.exe file but I followed these exact instructions when moving my steam install and I did not lose any game saves.

NOTE: If any of the games have a problem running do a quick "verify game data"
 
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