Could anyone offer me steam advice? about transfer

[carling220]

Hello

So i have reformatted my PC. As steam website says, I backed up the steam.exe file, and the entire SteamApps folder. The problem is, the appls folder is like over 400gb. To transfer that from my external HD will take 4-5 hours, and on top of that, I don't want to clutter up my HD with tonnes of games i won't play any more.

I'd like to only install games I am playing; of which there are only say, 6-7.

To download all 7 would take a long time, i.e. GTA 5 which is 60gig.

I want to transfer across the game data for these individual games from my external HD. The game data appears to be in the 'Common' folder. However, outside of the 'Common' folder, there are lots of little files called 'app manifest', and a few other folders (which are mostly empty).

My question, do i need to copy the steamapps folder as a whole? If I just take the game data I want, will not taking all the other files leave important gaps in places on the games I want? i.e. are some of the steammanifest files for example going to interfere with playing GTA 5?

Secondly, I have also copied all save data from my documents, and also the 'userdata' folder from the steam folder on the previous PC. Would I need to copy these over too? Or does steam remember and cloud store saves from GTA V, assetto corsa, and other games etc?

Thanks!

 

[cmdrdredd]

You need the save date in the correct folder on your OS drive, yes.

As for the games themselves, download steam and install it. Then drop the game folders you want in the steamapps/common folder. Then open steam and have it verify the game files. I think you have to tell steam you want to download it if it doesn't recognize the game folder. It won't download, it'll just verify the install.

I'm kind of uncertain about the last step, it had been a while for me.

 

[Kudro]

Just copy the games you want from your 'common' folder. Then in Steam, just Install the game like how you would normally download a new game. The first thing Steam will do is check for existing files. It shouldn't have to download anything (or much).

Edit: On a new Steam installation, the common folder may not exist until you start to download a game, then it will create it. At least that's how it used to be. So if there's no common folder to copy your games to, just start downloading any game and it will automatically create the folder structure. Then copy your games from common (old PC) to common (new PC)