Is there away I can put steam on a new hard drive with out re-downloading all my games?

[Tim_the_Computer]

I'm almost done building my new rig, and I was wondering if there was a way I could copy and paste the steam folder and all my games within to a flash drive.

I know you guys will probably think just re-download it, and I would to, the smallest game i have is 2 GB, which to me doesn't sound like it would take too long to download right? Well I was wrong, it took me 1 day to download it because I'm getting 16-39 KB/S
and its going to take me around 2-3 days to download a 11 GB game. I don't want to wait to wait a week before I can play every single game I own.

So if I copied the Steam folder to a flash drive or a external hard drive, and put it on the new hard drive, do I have to download my games again?

Thanks!

 

[mcnumpty23]

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

 

[rowdymoody]

You can use an external hard drive to copy and paste.

 

[Vosgy]

Yer just copy the steam folder, the main one you want I think is the Steamapps folder, or is it commonapps, can't quite remember, this holds all the games, move them into the same folder on the new PC, then attempt to install the games, the steam client will notice there are files and run a check sum on them to make sure they are the right game files, and nothing should get Downloaded.