How to Move Your Steam Library to a New Drive Without Redownloading

Running out of space on your primary SSD is a common headache for PC gamers. Modern titles regularly exceed 100GB, and constantly uninstalling games to make room kills the spontaneity of deciding what to play. If you have added a new NVMe drive or SATA SSD to your system, you do not need to spend days redownloading your entire collection. Steam includes a built-in method to relocate games to a new drive while keeping your files intact.

Prepare the New Drive

Before moving anything, ensure your new drive is properly formatted as NTFS. Steam requires this file system for its libraries. Check that you have enough free space to accommodate the games you want to move, plus about 10% extra headroom for future updates.

Open Steam and navigate to Settings, then Storage. Click the dropdown menu at the top and select Add Drive. Choose your new drive from the list and create a new Steam library folder. Steam will automatically name it “SteamLibrary” and create the necessary subfolder structure.

Moving Games One by One

Steam’s interface now allows you to move individual games without manual file copying. In the Storage manager, check the box next to the game you want to relocate, then click the Move button at the bottom right. Select your new drive from the dropdown and confirm. Steam will handle the file transfer internally, preserving your save files, workshop mods, and configuration settings.

This process works for most games, though some with complex DRM or third-party launchers may need verification afterwards. Do not interrupt the transfer by closing Steam or shutting down your PC, as this can corrupt the game files.

The Manual Method for Bulk Transfers

If you prefer to move multiple games quickly or Steam’s built-in mover is acting sluggish, you can perform a manual transfer. First, close Steam completely by right-clicking its system tray icon and selecting Exit. Navigate to your current Steam library folder, usually found at C:Program Files (x86)Steamsteamappscommon.

Copy the folders of the games you want to move to the new location, which should be inside the new drive’s SteamLibrary folder under steamappscommon. Once the copy finishes, return to your original library and delete the game folders you just moved. Do not use Steam’s uninstall button yet, as this would delete the files you just copied.

Relinking the Games

Restart Steam. The games you moved will show as uninstalled in your library. Click Install on each one, but crucially, select your new drive as the installation location. Steam will check the folder, discover the existing files, and allocate disk space almost instantly instead of downloading. After a brief verification process, the game will be marked as installed and ready to play.

If Steam starts downloading the game instead of verifying, you likely copied the files to the wrong subfolder or the new library path is not set correctly. Cancel the download, verify your folder structure matches the original, and try again.

Cleaning Up the Old Drive

Once you have confirmed all games run properly from the new location, you can free up space on your original drive. Delete the old game folders from the common directory, and consider moving smaller indie titles or applications back to the old drive to balance your storage usage.

Moving your library preserves your playtime statistics, achievements, and cloud saves. The only thing you might need to reconfigure is custom graphics settings in games that store configurations outside the installation folder, though most modern titles sync these to the cloud automatically.