

Question about Steam and External Hard Drives.

#1Jason_Ryu_3Posted 11/2/2013 4:47:30 PM
Is it possible to transfer/store all of my steam games onto an external hard drive and run them on my laptop?

more detailed explanation:

my main gaming platform is my laptop (please don't bother with the whole "lol gaming laptop" deal, I'm well aware of the benefits of a desktop):

Sager NP8130
Geoforce gtx 560m
i7-2630qm @ 2.00 GHZ

since my hard drive is only 500GB, I can only have around 40-50 games installed at a time. Is it possible to free up my hard drive and install all of my games onto an external hard drive (like a 2TB portable one) and basically not have any games installed on the laptop, but if I want to play a steam game I just plug in the external hard drive and immediately start playing, then unplug it when I'm done?
Soul Silver FC: 1979 0236 8128
#2Jason_Ryu_3(Topic Creator)Posted 11/2/2013 5:56:15 PM
Soul Silver FC: 1979 0236 8128
#3LiquidDeePosted 11/2/2013 6:03:45 PM
I don't think you can do that but you can just install the games you play right now on the laptop and copy-paste from the external drive when you want to play something else so you won't have to download it.

It's not very convenient but you save a lot of time.
#4-CJF-Posted 11/2/2013 6:09:06 PM
I don't know if you can transfer them from one drive to another, but I do know you should be able to install them on an external drive and run them from that if you choose to. Just go to Steam > Settings and click on the "Downloads" tab, then click on "Manage Steam Library Folders" and select your external drive from the drop down box.
#5ihumpmypillow89Posted 11/2/2013 8:12:04 PM
You can install steam to the external HDD and have the games there, now some (not all) games support alternate install location. But unless you have a USB 3.0 port on that laptop the games are going to run slow as hell.
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#6Doost650Posted 11/3/2013 9:17:50 AM
I don't wanna start anything but I had a 1.5tb external and had alot of Steam games installed on it and played them and they ran perfectly fine.
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#7iammaxhailmePosted 11/3/2013 9:20:20 AM
If it's a portable external HDD it probably doesn't have a fan, so this isn't a great idea

If it's one of the big bulky ones with a fan, then it'll be fine
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