4 Ways to Make It Easy to Move Your Steam Games to Your SSD

How to move Steam games to SSD

"I recently purchased a 1TB sized SSD and wanted to move the Steam games that were originally installed on the HDD to this new SSD. However, when I tried to use copy and paste it didn't work at all and my friend suggested me to delete Steam and download it again. But I don't really want to do that because I have a lot of games on Steam with a total size of over 500GB and reinstalling it is too time consuming and there is no way to be sure if some other problems will occur. Can anyone give some other suggestions? I just need to migrate Steam as an app."

Steam, a digital distribution platform for video games developed by Valve Corporation in 2003, has become a popular gaming platform worldwide, and many users are accustomed to downloading a large number of games via Steam. As solid state drives (SSDs) become less expensive, many users wish to move previously downloaded Steam games to a new SSD, partly due to a lack of storage space on the original hard drive (Steam is installed on local disk C by default), and partly to reduce game load times, as SSDs offer the following advantages over traditional mechanical hard drives (HDDs).

• Faster read and write speeds
• Better performance and reliability
• More power saving and less noise
• Greater durability

Some of these users, however, will have some difficulties in upgrading their hard drive, such as not knowing how to move Steam games to SSD.If you are also troubled by this, please follow these methods to solve the problem.

4 Ways to Move Steam Games to an SSD

How to move Steam games from HDD to SSD?You can do it in the following 4 ways.

• Moving games with Steam Space Manager
• Moving with Steam Library Manager
• Move the entire Steam folder directly
• Move Steam games to SSD with professional cloning software

Method 1. Use Steam Space Manager to move the game

In the second half of 2021, Steam adds a new feature called Space Manager, which allows you to see all the games on your local disk and how much storage space they are taking up, making it easier to manage. It also allows you to quickly move single or multiple games to any other location, making it easier than the traditional "Move Install Folder" feature. If you want to move your Steam games to SSD, please follow these steps.

1. Run Steam, tap the Steam button in the top left corner, and select Settings in the drop-down menu.
2. Switch to Downloads in the left panel and tap on the STEAM Collection Library folder.
3. In the Space Manager viewport, find the top disk area and tap the + icon next to it.
4. In the new viewport, switch to I want to select another location and tap the Add button.

5. Select the new SSD and tap the Create Folder button, set a name for the created folder and tap the OK button, then tap the Select button.

Note: You can navigate to this path to confirm that the folder was successfully created.

6. Return to Space Manager and confirm that the disk area has the previously selected disk.
7. In the list of games below, find and check the game you want to move and tap the Move button.

Note: If you have more than one game you want to move, please check all of them.

8. In the Move contents window, you can see that the destination disc has been automatically switched to the previously selected disc, just tap the Move button.

Method 2. Use Steam Library Manager to move

Steam Library Manager is a tool that helps you manage your Steam library, it lists all the libraries on your computer and the games in them, you can move single or multiple Steam games to any location with this application. It also means that you can move Steam games to SSD, follow the steps below. Please note that you should close Steam before using Steam Library Manager.

1. Download and install the Steam Library Manager and run the application.
2. Tap the folder icon in the bottom right corner, tap the Select button and select a new SSD, then switch the library type to Steam and tap the Create Library button.

3. Return to the main Steam Library Manager screen, select the original Steam path in the left panel, find the game you want to move in the right panel, and drag it to the newly created library.

Note: If you have multiple games you want to move, drag them separately.

4. Switch to the Task Manager tab at the top, verify that the source location is correct for the target location, and tap the Start button.

5. During the game move, you can see the logs generated to confirm if there is a problem.

Method 3. Move the entire Steam folder directly

Windows has a built-in copy and paste feature that helps you move your entire Steam folder, which means you can move Steam games to your SSD. You'll need to close Steam before you start, here are the detailed steps to do so.

1. Use Windows+S to open the search box, type Steam, and find the appropriate application below the best comparison, right-click on it and select Open archive location. If you installed it on local disk C by default, the path should be local disk C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam.
2. Return to the previous level, right-click to select the Steam folder, and choose Copy from the expanded menu.
3. Navigate to the new SSD and create a new folder, right-click on the blank area then select Paste.
4. You can rename the old folder and keep it in the source directory as a backup, or you can choose to delete it. Then run Steam.exe from the new path and create a new shortcut.

Method 4. Use professional cloning software to move Steam games to SSD

Steam Space Manager and Steam Library Manager are too cumbersome, and the latter even requires additional download, which is not very friendly for beginners; while Windows 10 or Windows 11 copy and paste is slow, once you need to migrate more games, then it will take a lot of your time and effort, and may also be unavailable. So is there an easy and fast way to do it? Here we recommend you to use AOMEI Backupper Standard for disk cloning, which can quickly clone all the contents of the source disk (including all Steam games) to the target disk to save a lot of time and effort.

AOMEI Backupper Standard provides you with free and professional disk cloning service, you can quickly clone files, folders and applications such as Steam games from the source disk to the target disk with just a few clicks, and if there is a system file on the source disk, you can also clone the system file to the target disk. Next, we will take the system disk as the source disk (Steam's default installation location) and introduce you the disk cloning steps in detail. But before that, you need to do the following preparations.

• AOMEI Backupper Standard uses intelligent cloning by default, so you need to check the storage space of the two disks participating in the disk cloning and make sure that the target disk is greater than or equal to the used space of the source disk, otherwise the cloning may fail.
• When performing disk cloning, existing partitions on the target disk are overwritten or deleted. Therefore, if you have partitions on the target disc, it is recommended to perform a partition backup first.
• Download and install AOMEI Backupper Standard.

Step 1. Open the AOMEI Backupper Standard, click Clone > Disk Clone.

Tip:

Disk clone only supports 2 types in the free edition. One is MBR to MBR (system disks), and the other is data disk clone. If you need to clone GPT to GPT, MBR to GPT, or GPT to MBR, you can download the professional version.

Step 2. In the Source Disk window, select the disk where the Steam game is stored as the source disk and tap Next.

Step 3. In the Destination Disk window, select the new SSD as the destination disk, and click Next.

Step 4. Check the SSD alignment checkbox to accelerate the reading and writing speed of the target SSD. Confirm your operations and click Start Clone.

Notes:

• Edit Partitions: You can change the partition size using this feature (advanced version).
• Sector By Sector Clone: It will clone all sectors, whether they are used or not. And it is available for cloning to disks of the same or larger size. So you can clone disk to larger disk easily.

In addition to disk clone, you can use AOMEI Backupper for more features:.

• If you want to transfer a large volume or a large number of files to another location, you can use the Basic Sync feature, which is more time efficient compared to Windows copy and paste. However, it is not recommended to use this method to move Steam games, as it may cause the transferred over Steam games to not open.
• If your Steam games are stored on the system disk (e.g. local disk C), then you can use the System Clone feature after upgrading to Pro, which will be more time efficient than disk cloning.
• If you are worried about losing or corrupting Steam games or other data on your disk, you can use the Disk Backup feature to back up everything on the source disk (including Steam games) to any desired location for enhanced data security.
• If a partition on the source disk is dedicated to a Steam game, then you can also use the Partition Clone feature, which will be more time efficient than cloning the entire disk.

Other questions and answers related to Steam

Apart from moving Steam games to SSD, if you have any other questions about Steam, please read the following in detail, which will answer some common questions about Steam.

How to fix Steam installation errors

Usually there are no problems with Mobile Steam, but at some point, there can be some installation errors, in which case you can follow these methods to fix them.

1. Use Windows+S to open the File Explorer and find the SteamApps folder.
2. Right-click on the Steam installation folder, select Copy, and paste it to the desktop.
3. Use Windows+R to open the Execute viewport, type control and press Enter.
4. In the console viewport, tap on Programset, then Programs and Features, and find Steam in the list on the right.
5. Right-click on it and select Uninstall.
6. Go to the Steam website from your browser and reinstall Steam, then copy the SteamApps folder to the Steam installation directory, this will copy all previously downloaded games and settings to the new location.

Note: If a game becomes corrupted after a Steam move, you can have Steam automatically find and replace the corrupted file by verifying the integrity of the local data by.

Run Steam>Open Steam Collection Library>Right click on the corrupted game>Select Content>Switch to Local Archive tab>Tap on Verify Game Archive Integrity and finally wait for this process to complete.

How to move an existing Steam installation

If you want to move Steam to SSD, please refer to the following steps.

1. Log out of your account and close Steam, and find the folder where Steam is installed in the Windows Explorer. If you are installing by default, then it should be on the local disk C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam.
2. Delete all other folders and files except the Steam.exe and SteamApps Userdata folders.
3. Then copy and paste this Steam folder to another location, for example to a folder in D: on your local disk. Note that any subsequent games you download will be saved in the new folder.
4. Open Steam again and log in to your account, find and right click on the downloaded game in your collection library and select content.
5. Switch to the Local Files tab in the left panel, tap Verify Game File Integrity in the right panel, and wait for the process to complete.

Conclusion

If you don't know how to move your Steam games to SSD, please read this article in detail and follow the 4 methods provided in it to make sure your Steam games will open properly after the move. Note that the first 3 methods have some disadvantages, not suitable for beginners and will consume a lot of your time and effort, so it is more recommended to use the last method, namely AOMEI Backupper Standard's disk cloning function.

AOMEI Backupper Standard has a clear and easy-to-use interface, you can quickly clone all the contents of the source disk (including Steam games) to other disks in just a few simple steps. In addition, the software can also provide you with system backup, disk restore, file backup and other functions to provide comprehensive protection for your computer data.