If your hard drive is running out of space, you can move your collection of PC games to a different drive. Here’s how to set up the move from your game client of choice.
SSDs have gotten bigger, but so have games—Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was over 200GB at launch, which doesn’t leave room for much else on a modestly sized disk. If you’re willing to give up some of those super-fast loading times, you can move some of your games to a secondary hard drive with more space without re-downloading them.
Some game clients, like Steam, have built-in features that allow you to move your games from one location to another. Others, like the Epic Games Store, require a little finesse to move a game’s files. Here’s how to do it on the most popular launchers.
Steam: Add a New Library Folder
There’s a good chance most of your digital collection resides in Steam, which thankfully makes it easy to move your games. From the main window, head to Steam > Settings in the upper-left corner and go to the Downloads tab in the sidebar. Select Steam Library Folders at the top of the new window to open the Storage Manager.
Click the + icon next to your current drive and choose your secondary install location. Hit Add, and the new folder will appear next to your first drive. Now, when you go to install a new game, you’ll be given a choice between your pre-selected library folders. I put the games I’m currently playing on my SSD, with the games I occasionally re-visit on my slower, spinning hard disk.
To move a game you currently have installed, return to the Storage Manager and select the games. Click Move, then choose the correct Steam folder and click Move again. This may take a bit of time if the game’s files take up a lot of space. When it’s done, Steam will launch the game normally without a hiccup.
Note that you may need to do a bit of extra work if you have custom mods installed, but for most titles, it’s that easy. Check out our list of the best Steam tips for more.GOG Galaxy: Move the Folder and Reinstall
GOG Galaxy aims to be a one-stop shop for all your game libraries, but it also allows you to download and install games from GOG.com. You can change where games are installed, but there is no built-in button to move downloaded games to a new folder.
Click the gear icon in the top-left corner and open Settings > Installing, updating and select Game installation folder. Choose your preferred location and future games will be saved here. We can also manipulate this feature to move downloaded games to a new location.
To move a game, turn to File Explorer and navigate to GOG Galaxy’s installation folder, the default being C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games. Right-click on the folder containing the game in question, then cut and paste the folder to your new location—say, D:\Games\GOG—and wait for the files to copy over.
When that’s done, open GOG Galaxy, right-click on the game, and choose Manage Installation > Uninstall. You’ll get an error telling you it couldn’t uninstall the game, but that’s okay.
Click on the game again to install it, and when it asks you where you want it installed, choose the folder where you copied the game files (in our example, D:\Games\GOG). It will begin installing the game, realize the files are already there, and the installation will complete very quickly, without re-downloading the files a second time.
