[SOLVED] Really no way to backup Windows Store Apps/Games?

[jailhousews]

About to do a clean install, backing up everything to my secondary drive. With my steam and my steam games I simply copy/paste them back into the proper location after re-install and then run the steam installer and no re-download required.

I thought I could do the same with The Outer Worlds which I installed through the Xbox (beta) app because it's included with my game pass subscription. But even when I take ownership and give full control it still refuses to copy most of the files, excpet about 250MB out of about 38GB. Really don't want to re-download it because it takes at least 15 hours on my internet connection, if it downloads at my max of 6Mbps.

If the issue is digital rights, I don't see why they can't just check when you download something if you already own it or not. Is it to try to stop people from using mods or altering save data or somehting? Ridiculous.

 

[jailhousews]

Ok so the only thing I could think of to try was to go into settings, apps, and the use the move function to move the installation location to the secondary drive prior to re-installing windows.

Now, I can't see any way to make windows recognize the game where it is currently located, but if anyone know how I could then simply move it back to the main drive after that.

Edit
Went to settings, system, storage and tried setting location where apps are installed to the secondary drive thinking maybe it would detect the game that way. It did, but only to ask me if I wanted to delete apps already on the drive which is required to make the change. So can't recover it that way.

 

[Colif]

horses mouth -

Unfortunately the app installation files are tied to a particular OS installation and user profile, refreshing is essentially a new OS install so you lose the ‘link’ between this and your drive.

The only solution is to download the games/apps again.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...reuse-my/51a5dc28-6d53-429c-a419-6ae4163beb0b

Yes, Steam/Origin are more user friendly. It really makes no sense that MS can't do it but others can.