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Steam Backup and Restore question: How do I restore to a different path?

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EarthDog

Gulper Nozzle Co-Owner
Joined
Dec 15, 2008
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The question on the surface seems easy, but... I am struggling here. I made a complete backup of all my steam games and put it on a HDD. I wiped my OS and reinstalled from an image. I then restored a couple games to C:\ steam folder (default), but I also wanted to restore others to a different drive. However, when I try to do this, I do not get an option to restore these to my other, already defined, path/folder. It wants to always restore to C:\.

Thoughts on how I can get the rest of the games to restore to a different, already defined path/folder in Steam using its restore functionality?
 
Not sure on its restore function but you can use steamtool to have it make a copy and symlink the directories. That's how I manage my steam and copy games to my ssd.
 
You need to set steam to see the other folder in settings so under downloads STEAM LIBRARY FOLDERS add the other folder and select ok, when you go to use STEAM restore function you can then tell it to restore to that other folder and it will copy/un compress/ the game to the destination. I have this set-up all the time STEAM is installed to my OS SSD but it's folders for my games are set to my 1TB Western Digital drive, my Seagate is my games back-up for everything and I use that to restore games to the WD drive.
 
Its been a while since I've done a Backup and Restore function but what AngelfireUk83 mentions sounds very familiar. I thought the whole process was very similar to that of installation of a game when you choose a few options when you have multiple directories / drives you can install to now.

Not sure on its restore function but you can use steamtool to have it make a copy and symlink the directories. That's how I manage my steam and copy games to my ssd.

Actually Steam has gotten smarter over the years, where I've even copied directories from one drive to another and vise versa and seems to pick up where it is installed and goes on its marry way as long as you have set the Steam Directories for the folder your copying it into. I've done it with entire drives and moving folders over. I know I looked at the Steamtool a while back because I was upgrading and wanted to have somethings on SSD and some on HDD, but did what I mentioned above and it worked out so didn't even have to use the tool.
 
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You need to set steam to see the other folder in settings so under downloads STEAM LIBRARY FOLDERS add the other folder and select ok, when you go to use STEAM restore function you can then tell it to restore to that other folder and it will copy/un compress/ the game to the destination. I have this set-up all the time STEAM is installed to my OS SSD but it's folders for my games are set to my 1TB Western Digital drive, my Seagate is my games back-up for everything and I use that to restore games to the WD drive.
Thanks Angel, but that is exactly my problem described in the first post. I know the process you are describing, but it is not letting me point to the alternative path which is already defined in downloads. I don't get an option to restore to any place but the default location regardless.

I know HOW I SHOULD be able to do it, but it is not letting me do so.
 
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