Steam and Origin games with Windows 10

[kol12]

I have my steam and origin games installed on a separate HD to my OS drive. I plan on doing a clean install of Windows 10 onto my OS drive.

Can I reinstall steam and origin and have my games linked back up?
Can any game profiles and saves that might be on my OS drive be backed up within steam or origin or will they need to be backed up manually?

 

[SBMfromLA]

I know what you're talking about.. I have Steam installed on a different drive (Drive D) on my computer and I perform clean reinstalls of Windows all the time. All I do is... after I get Windows reinstalled I just download the steam client and reinstall that client back into Drive D... all the current files will carry over and I never lose anything...

 

[kol12]

So you have steam app installed on separate drive to your OS? I have the steam app installed on my OS drive but the games installed on a different drive.

 

[SBMfromLA]

So you have steam app installed on separate drive to your OS? I have the steam app installed on my OS drive but the games installed on a different drive.

NO... I have Steam and all games installed on Drive D... No need to put it on my C Drive SSD... so if I do a reinstall o Windows... I just download and reinstall the Steam program onto Drive D.. it's like doing an upgrade.. nothing is deleted.. I install all my games and non-essential programs on Drive D... so I don't need to reinstall any of my games if and when I decide to do a clean install of Windows. Works out great for me...

 

[kol12]

Yeah I have steam installed on my OS C: so I'm going to lose the installation with Windows 10 but my games will still be on E: I'm wondering if my games can be re-linked when I reinstall steam.

 

[little_me]

well, if you installed steam on C and games are on E, you wipe C and install windows/steam again

by default, steam will think that games belong to C but once you tell it that no, they are there (E drive) it should find the game files without any real problems. You might need to restart steam after telling it that games are on E for it to find them but past that, there should be no problems.

bigger danger are saves/settings in games since quite few of them store them in various places under your profile ("c:\users\<profile name>\documents\my games" and documents\saved games and \appdata\local\<game name> and appdata\roaming\<game name>)

so.. yeah, if wiping C drive, possibly copy such things over if they matter.

 

[kol12]

So your game library re-appears with a reinstall? I then should be able to redirect them without having to reinstall them?

I'm surprised steam doesn't have the capability of backing up save profiles etc, I guess I have to go looking for them.