About to format, how to back up steam?

[gogoman123]

hi all.

so I am about to format my pc (windows died), and I was wondering what do I need to do in order to keep my games and progress in the games when I reinstall windows?

before u say it, I have already posted a ticket to steam support (no reply yet) and already asked the steam forum (also no reply).

anyone can advice?


thanks

 

[namelessonez]

I don't think you'll be able to go this route mate! When you install a game, the game makes certain entries in the windows registry. Now, when you format windows, i 'believe' the registry also gets wiped out, thereby deleting the said entries.

What you can try though, is to backup the games before going ahead with the format. This should ensure that you don't need to re-download every game from steam again. Again, this is just my theory and members may point out if this is wrong.

 

[joedastudd]

If you can still access the drive you can just copy all the steam app folders and files onto your new installation.
I did this with about 100gb of games a while back, I did verify the local files on all of them, but *touch wood* about 2 years later and they still are working fine.

 

[pauls3743]

Re-install Windows WITHOUT formatting your hard drive. The new installation will dump your old windows files into a folder named "Windows.old". Navigate to the folder Windows.old\Users\<Old Username> and copy the contents to C:\Users\<New Username>. Merge the folders but do NOT overwrite any files.

Install Steam to the same drive/folder it was installed in originally e.g. I always install mine to "D:\Program files (x86)\Steam". Your games will re-install as required when you run them but all your savegames should be present as well.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Steam also has it's own backup utility or at least it used to. I haven't used the backup option in a long time so don't know if it's still there.

 

[AntiZig]

Hello, I apologize I cannot give you a direct link as I cannot access steam right now, but

go to steam support website search for back up games and moving steam to different location

There's several articles on steam support website telling you exactly what you have to copy in order to back up your games when you're doing a reinstall of the OS.

Oh here, I answered this recently before:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/117609-13-transferring-steam-drive

 

[Trialsking]

Yes you can back up your games on Steam. Google is your friend!

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8794-YPHV-2033

Do this so you don't need to re download all your games. You still need to stall them once you reformat, but it can be done in Steam