Sunday, August 02, 2015

Steam Folder Migration: USB 3.0 external storage drive, to internal SSD

We recently complete updating storage on Dawn's laptop, adding additional capacity and modifying partition sizes.

Today, we moved the Steam folder, from a Samsung T1 Portable 250GB USB 3.0 External SSD, to her newly expanded laptop internal SSD, loosely following the instructions on the Steam web site:
  • Exit the Steam client application
  • Browse to the Steam installation folder for the Steam installation you would like to move (D:\Steam, for us)
  • Copy the folder to the new location; for example: C:\Program Files\Steam
  • Delete all of the files and folders, in C:\Program Files\Steam, except the SteamApps folder and Steam.exe
  • Rename D:\Steam to D:\SteamBackup
  • For the first time only, launch Steam via "Run as Administrator", then log into your account
    • Running as non-Administrator, Steam produced an error which said (paraphrasing): "Could not connect; please connect to a network and try again
    • Running as Administrator did not produce the error
  • Verify integrity of game cache(s):
    • From the Library section, right-click on the game and select Properties from the menu
    • Select the Local files tab and click the Verify integrity of game cache... button
    • Steam will verify the game's files - this process may take several minutes
    • Once the process is completed, the Check Window will automatically exit
  • Manually update the Start Menu shortcut, for Steam: right-click on the icon, select Properties, then change the location the shortcut points to, so it points to the new folder (for us, we changed it from D:\Steam\Steam.exe, to C:\Program Files\Steam\Steam.exe)
Done. 

NOTES
  • After you have some confidence that Steam works as expected, you can either keep D:\Steam as a backup, or delete it
  • OK to start Steam as non-administrator, for all future uses...that first time, above, Steam needs administrator rights to repair itself
Previously, previouslypreviously.

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