How To Move A Game From One Drive To Another Easily

Do you know you can move a game from one drive to another? It is a very easy task to move your already installed games to another hard disk. Whether it is on the same PC or on another, it is very easy to achieve.

There are many reasons why you might want to move all your games to another hard drive. It could be that you are changing your old hard drive, you are running out of space on the drive, etc. All these are valid reasons that could make you want to move your files including games to another hard disk.

There are several ways you can move games and in this tutorial, I will show you some different ways you can move your games onto another hard disk. You can check my previous article about How to use ThrottleStop to speed up your gaming PC.

How To Move A Game From One Drive to the other

There are several ways you can move a game from one drive to the other. The procedure also depends on which game you are moving. If you have your game installer and progress saved locally, there is a way to move it. If you are into online gaming, platforms like steam and the rest, there is a way to do it as well.

We shall look at some of the simplest ways to make it easier.

1. Move and reinstall (locally hosted games only)

This is the best option if you have the game installed locally with your data file stored locally as well. With this option, you must still have the game’s installer for it to work. Usually, what you will you have to do is to make sure your drive is running very well.

1. Head to documents, where most games store their saved data and copy the saved data folder. If it is not there, find the folder that contains that information.
2. Create a new folder on your new hard drive and name it ‘Games’.
3. To avoid conflicts, uninstall the game.
4. Start the installer and make sure you have the folder path ‘Games’ that you created earlier selected as the destination folder.
5. Install the game.
6. Start the game and save it to create the save folder.
7. Go to documents or the folder that contains your saved data and replace the files in the folder with the ones in the folder you copied earlier. That is it. You have finished moving your game successfully.

This method will work for only games that use locally stored data. There is a different method to move other games that are partially hosted online.

2. Backup and restore (online profiles)

This method works with most games that synchronize your progress with an online account. The method is very simple but somehow time-consuming.

1. Start the game on your old hard drive and log into the make.
2. Backup or synchronize your current data with your account.
3. Uninstall the game from your computer
4. Download a new installer and reinstall. Make sure you select the path to your new hard drive as the destination for your new installation.
5. After the installation, log into the game with your account and restore your progress. That is it, you have just moved your game successfully.

3. Create a new library and relink

If you are using gaming platforms like Steam, then that will be way easier

since you only have to understand how Steam loads your games to be able to move them.

Steam loads your games from what is known as the Steam Library. The path to the games is usually starting from the steam folder so you will have ‘Root(Your drive’s letter)\Steam\steamlibrary\steamapps\common’. In the ‘common’ folder, you will have all your games.

1. All you have to do is replicate the games folder and move the games there. So simply create a folder on your new drive with the drive path for instance; ‘D:\steam\steamlibrary\steamapps\common’.
2. Start your steam app and add your newly created library path to the existing one.
3. Copy your games from the old Steam library folder to the new one you created on your new drive. Make sure you put the games in the folder with the name ‘Common’.
4. Start Steam and navigate your Steam library.
5. Select all the games you have moved to the new library
6. Right-click your selection and go to “Manage >> Uninstall”. This will Uninstall all the games from your old library.
7. All the games again but this time around, click on “Install”. Steam will try downloading the games into your new library but the files are already there so it will skip the downloading and load the files instead.
8. After a few verifications, you should be able to load your games fully.

How to move a game from one drive to another FAQ

There are quite some questions people are asking about the moving of games. If you have some that have not been answered here yet, feel free to leave them in the comment box below.