Hey all, I'm planning on getting a new hard drive and was wondering what's a more foolproof way of backing up my whole Steam library? (Part on C drive and part on D drive)

If I use the "backup game files" options in the Steam client will it backup the save files even if they're somewhere else?
e.g. My Super Hexagon game is in my D drive but the saves are in (C drive)~Steam\userdata\%steamuserid%\221640\remote\

Any answers or suggestions are appreciated, thanks!!

11 years ago*

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Steam cloud?

11 years ago
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Hmm well I don't think all games have it, and I was thinking of saving stuff to an external hard drive to save download time? But I'm most worried about the save files...

11 years ago
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search for the saves manually, back them up. Tada! And good for you quill, more space for games!

PS: Is what I did the last time I switched pcs. You won't miss anything that way.

11 years ago
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Thanks Kzwen! I'll do some of the most important ones like ones I've completed or almost completed for sure :D

11 years ago
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the save files are all backed up in steam cloud and everytime you close the game it syncs the save files.
and if your computer and the cloud doesn't match up it asks if you want to download from cloud or upload to cloud.
so you don't need to back those files, steam does it for you.
please feel free to correct me if i am wrong.
PS - i deleted all my fallout new vegas saves a long time ago but after downloading the game again i was surprised to find all my saves were there.

11 years ago
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Not every game supports Steam cloud. For example, I thought Jamestown does, but it doesn't and I lost my saves after a format.

11 years ago
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well then you can just buy a usb flash disk even 1gb should be enough for save files.
they are about 2-3$

11 years ago
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the problem is that most games keep the save files in diferent folders. some are in game folders, others are in my documents,etc
if you have a big library with many games it's a bother to search for each save file.

11 years ago
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Yeah that's the issue for me, there're so many games I've played about half or even just a bit, and the saves are all scattered, some are in Steam folders but some are in my documents (under different names!) and yet some are invis :/

11 years ago
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Have a look at this for example and save everything in Steam/userdata

11 years ago
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I don't know of any automatic method that knows all the possible places your saves might be hiding, short of backing up every drive.

If you buy a new drive in a retail box, there's a good chance it comes with some free migrate your old drive to the the new drive software. If you only have one physical drive, that should be all you need. And if your new drive is larger, you'll probably be able to resize the partition(s) to use all the available space.

If you're buying a bare drive, you're going to need some other option. Acronis Disk Director would work ($) and there's probably something free available but I wouldn't know the name of it. Good luck! :)

11 years ago
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The most important thing is to save your old hard drive, so if you discover you missed something you can go back to it and get it later.

11 years ago
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I actually did a clean install of win7 yesterday afternoon to my new SSD!

Been using SaveGameBackup for about a year now and successfully restored all the gamesaves of my currently installed games.

As a bonus, I manually created some entries to keep my steam categories and IE favorites backed-up.

11 years ago
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I had never heard of this, thanks a lot for the link !

11 years ago
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I tried out a couple savegame apps after losing my Just Cause 2 gamesaves from a previous reformat.

(after putting some 150 hours into that game! … SHEESH!)

SaveGameBackup was the simplest to use, no ads, 100% free.

11 years ago
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been using SaveGameBackup for a while now, it really is excellent.

11 years ago
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Thanks for this, going to give it a try!!!

11 years ago
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IE favorites?

11 years ago
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For when the family asks to use your PC. Duh.

11 years ago
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I just copied the entire steamapps folder
when i got a new computer.

11 years ago
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Closed 11 years ago by littlekuillyboo.