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I want to change the location steam saves my games too.

How can I do that?

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    please, explain better what do you mean with "Steam games". Any game distributed through Steam or some specific games only?
    – Drake
    Jul 14, 2010 at 19:42
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    You can't; there's no one place steam saves all your save games too, because most games create save files themselves. Steam doesn't even know where each game puts them. Foolishly, many game developers like to invent new and unexpected places to store you saved games, making it difficult to backup and move them. The exceptions are the new games that support Steam Cloud (once again, it's up to the game what goes into the Steam Cloud, but save files are usually included).
    – MGOwen
    Jul 19, 2013 at 14:13

3 Answers 3

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There's no built in method to move only your games (SteamApps) directory. Your best bet is to move your entire Steam installation to your desired location. Valve has a support article that details the steps involved in the entire procedure, along with some important warnings:

Moving a Steam Installation and Games

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  • I have done this several times and it works like a charm.
    – Ritwik Bose
    Jul 14, 2010 at 2:13
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Use mklink and symlink directories. Create a symbolic link in Program Files\Steam that points to a steamapps directory somewhere else. I've done it 2 times successfully.

Also, I should note, that if you don't know your file system then I would ask for help in doing this.

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  • That doesn't move it, it only makes a copy without taking up more space.
    – user56
    Jul 14, 2010 at 11:09
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    Yes, it does move it. You move the steamapps dir to some other drive. Then in the Program Files/Steam you put a symlink to that directory that contains the data. The file inside of Program Files/Steam becomes just a pointer to the other location but, when Steam interacts with it, it sees only the data. So you have your data somewhere else and only a pointer inside of Program Files/Steam to that data. I've already done it multiple times.
    – Corv1nus
    Jul 14, 2010 at 12:44
  • AFAIK, you can't mklink across drives in Windows.
    – Macha
    Jul 14, 2010 at 13:50
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    I've done it on all local drives. My old setup was a 10,000RPM boot drive/OS drive. I had steam installed on there and then I had a 640GB SATA3 drive where I had my steamapps folder. I used a symlink and it worked fine.
    – Corv1nus
    Jul 14, 2010 at 14:19
  • It's definitely not something someone who doesn't know what they're doing should try. Hardlinks (junctions in this case) are very badly supported by NTFS.
    – user56
    Jul 14, 2010 at 19:13
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You can't individually. However, you can install Steam anywhere you want, and the save games will then go there. The easiest way would be to move the current directory, uninstall Steam and re-install is wherever you want it, then copy over the moved directory.

Granted, this won't make much of a difference unless you want them on another disk, but it's the only way.

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    Also note some games don't save inside the steam folder ( source )
    – alexanderpas
    Jul 13, 2010 at 23:37
  • True, but that has more to do with the specific games than with Steam.
    – user56
    Jul 13, 2010 at 23:42
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    Not all Steam games saves in steamapps folder. Actually the majority of them saves in folders inside your local profile "Document & Settings/" etc.
    – Drake
    Jul 14, 2010 at 19:10

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