Reformatting my Hard drive, Any way to save me re-downloading steam games?

[Connor19]

Hi guys,
so I recently built a new PC, I used my old hard drive and just now decided to reformat my Hard drive with windows 7.

The only problem is, My internet is really slow and we're unable to upgrade until our current contract is up. I've a lot of games that I'd need to re-download which will takes me months with my download speed!

Is there any way to save me downloading these games again?

 

[Inigor2d2]

There is an option to back up the games. Under Steam in the menu bar there is a Backup and Restore option.

 

[nukemaster]

Just copy your steamapps folder. Hell I have even took the full steam folder(you still should reinstall steam before copying it back over it self.).

After you reinstall just copy the folder back and restart steam. Steam will deal with any first run requirements on the games next run, but will not have to re-download them.

You can also backup games to DVD's by right clicking a game and selecting backup game files.

Please manually grab all game saves from your documents because not all games save to steam cloud.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

Unless you have backed up the game folders to an external hard drive, you will need to download them again.

 

[Memnarchon]

There is an option to back up the games. Under Steam in the menu bar there is a Backup and Restore option.

+1 this.