How do I transfer already installed steam games to new internal ssd offline

[vstar950]

I am going to be moving to a place that has terrible internet and will not be able to re-download all the games I have on Steam again. I would like to take the ones that I have and transfer them to the new hard drive on my steam deck. How do I transfer these files over to my new solid state without having to re-download everything again? I do not play online. I strictly game offline.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I am going to be moving to a place that has terrible internet and will not be able to re-download all the games I have on Steam again. I would like to take the ones that I have and transfer them to the new hard drive on my steam deck. How do I transfer these files over to my new solid state without having to re-download everything again? I do not play online. I strictly game offline.

Copy the entire steamapps folder. There is a backup option to export your library (partially or completely) but that way is much slower.
Save data could be located anywhere, it differs from game to game.

 

[vstar950]

On the new hdd,

Copy the entire steamapps folder. There is a backup option to export your library (partially or completely) but that way is much slower.
Save data could be located anywhere, it differs from game to game.

do I have to be connected to the internet for the games to boot for the first time?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

On the new hdd,

do I have to be connected to the internet for the games to boot for the first time?

Dunno. If it was Windows I would tell you to copy the entire Steam dir since that would transfer over your login and settings and everything but I'm not sure how that works on Steam Deck.
You definitely need to connect to the Internet for Steam Cloud to sync over your saves though unless you figure out where they're stored one by one and copy them.

 

[vstar950]

Dunno. If it was Windows I would tell you to copy the entire Steam dir since that would transfer over your login and settings and everything but I'm not sure how that works on Steam Deck.
You definitely need to connect to the Internet for Steam Cloud to sync over your saves though unless you figure out where they're stored one by one and copy them.

Yes I will be putting windows on the new large solid state drive. And because it is Windows it will never see the internet except in the beginning to get all drivers and Frameworks Etc. Thank you for the response

 

[Scarlet]

What I've always done is just copied the game directories from steamapps/common. To add them back I copy them back to that location and hit Install on Steam. From there it'll just verify all the files instead of downloading them.

The drawback to this though is that you need enough room on your SSD to have the game twice, since Steam doesn't realise the files are already there until you've started the install. It'll think it doesn't have room to "download" them if you're low on space.

 

[vstar950]

What I've always done is just copied the game directories from steamapps/common. To add them back I copy them back to that location and hit Install on Steam. From there it'll just verify all the files instead of downloading them.

The drawback to this though is that you need enough room on your SSD to have the game twice, since Steam doesn't realise the files are already there until you've started the install. It'll think it doesn't have room to "download" them if you're low on space.

Thank you very much for this. I will do just that and start off with my large titles all the way to my small titles. After I get this headache all configured I'm going to clone my drive so I do not have to deal with this kind of headache again. It took me a few months to get my steam deck OLED just the way I like it. Unfortunately there is no proper way to 100% clone a steam deck solid state drive with steamos on it. I have done clones with Clonezilla and another way to have them boot once and never again. At least I have experience cloning Windows hard drives and they are just plug and play.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

What I've always done is just copied the game directories from steamapps/common. To add them back I copy them back to that location and hit Install on Steam. From there it'll just verify all the files instead of downloading them.

The drawback to this though is that you need enough room on your SSD to have the game twice, since Steam doesn't realise the files are already there until you've started the install. It'll think it doesn't have room to "download" them if you're low on space.

If you copy the entire steamapps folder there is no need to hit install again. Specifically, the list of installed games is contained in steamapps\libraryfolders.vdf (it's a plain text file)

The method of copying specific games and hitting install can be useful in some cases, say for example a F2P game you play just got added to Steam and you want to transfer your existing game files to Steam without needing to redownload. It will figure out which files are the same and which ones need to be redownloaded.

 

[vstar950]

Thank yo

If you copy the entire steamapps folder there is no need to hit install again. Specifically, the list of installed games is contained in steamapps\libraryfolders.vdf (it's a plain text file)

Thank you good sir!