Can Steam games be moved to an external hard drive?

[hayley3]

My daughter is running out of room on her Alienware because of all her steam game downloads.
I'm trying to help her but I've been reading and it's really confusing.
I know that I can have Windows automatically install apps to the new external drive but we need to move some of her already downloaded games to the external drive. Can an external drive run applications such as steam games? I know that hard drives have specific speeds but externals are running off of usb. Is the external going to be fast enough?
She doesn't want to re-download the games and I don't blame her either.

Much thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

Steam games, yes. You can even have that other drive as the default location.

Steam games location
In the steam client:
Steam
Settings
Downloads
Steam Library Folders
Add library folder

To move an already installed game
Games library
Right click the game
Properties
Local Files
Move Install Folder


Performance, however...may suffer. Only way to know is to try.

 

[hayley3]

Thank you so much! Performance would be the issue then...but maybe an SSD drive would help some.