What is best way to upgrade my SSD drive and not blow up steam?

[Artista]

I currently have a 120GB ssd drive and upgrading to a 256Gb ssd drive. I want to do a clean install of Windows 7. Everything I can manage but am worried about blowing up my Steam installation. Steam is installed on my main drive (ssd) where the OS is installed but the games are on my 1Tb second drive.

I thought about installing all the games on the ssd drive but not enough room I believe. (Performance seems ok though I am sure that having the games on the ssd drive would make them faster)

How do I do this so I do not lose my games or lose access to them? (Do I use steam application and "backup" games?)

Thank you

 

[snouter]

Just re-download the games from steam?

During the steam install, I made a folder called "_steam" on my platter drive and installed the games there. Load times are not great, but, yeah, I did not want them on my SSD for space reasons.

 

[Elixer]

Well, you could move the games to where you want, then, it won't show up on your gamelist, however, when you go to download them again, point it to the new directory, and it should find it, and not download everything again.

 

[glugglug]

There really isn't a need to do a clean install for a SSD upgrade (especially when increasing capacity, vs. moving from HDD to smaller capacity SSD). You can just make an image of the old drive & extract the image on the new drive, then expand the partition to use the rest of the drive.

 

[ShintaiDK]

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

 

[corkyg]

There really isn't a need to do a clean install for a SSD upgrade (especially when increasing capacity, vs. moving from HDD to smaller capacity SSD). You can just make an image of the old drive & extract the image on the new drive, then expand the partition to use the rest of the drive.

This! Unless there is something wrong with your present setup, a clean install is, IMHO, a waste of time for a simple drive replacement.

 

[Puffnstuff]

I wouldn't worry too much about steam because once you log in and the software doesn't see your library it will begin to dl it again for you. I wish ea would've kept their games on steam instead of creating origin.

 

[jumpncrash]

I have my games on my other drive and when i reinstall I just reinstall steam into that folder and everything works out just fine

 

[aigomorla]

u can move your entire steam folder to the new drive, then uninstall steam.

Then on the new steam folder delete all your files except the folders and steam.exe
Rerun steam.exe and it should redownload everything required and reinstall.

Or after you have done your uninstall (make sure u made a full copy of your STEAM tho, or all your games will go bye bye), reinstall steam and point it to where u moved your old steam folder.

 

[schmuckley]

Image current steam drive with WD Acronis (must have WD drive)
or..Norton ghost..Available on older Hiren's boot CDs
copy over to new SSD