Moving games to new HDD without reinstalling ?

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Hi, I currently have a Corsair SSD with just my OS installed, then I have a secondary drive that I keep just games on.

It's only 500gb and I'm looking to upgrade to a 2tb drive and was wondering if it's as simple as formatting the new drive with the same drive letter as the "game" drive (obviously with the game drive disconnected) and then transferring all the files over ?

If not is there a way to do it so I don't have to reinstall everything again ?

Thanks in advance.
 
Soldato
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I think there is a program for moving Steam games but actual full disc installs not sure.

Don't think you can just 'drag & drop' files to a new disc and have them work, I've never successfully done it.
 
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I think there is a program for moving Steam games but actual full disc installs not sure.

Don't think you can just 'drag & drop' files to a new disc and have them work, I've never successfully done it.

I've had trouble when I've installed a clean OS and tried to use the old HDD with the game installs on because there are obvioulsy registry entries installed on the C drive that would be missing.

My thinking is, as long as the file path is the same it should work ?

Unless it writes hard drive specific data matching the 2 drives together ?

My problem is, most of the games aren't on Steam, some are, some I have discs for and others are long lost
 
Soldato
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Because you're using the same OS and maintaining the same drive letter, it should work fine. I've done this sort of thing many times.

If he's installing a fresh OS on a new drive, there is no way that all his games will still work by just copying them over to it when installed.

All the registry entries will be gone as well as the config files in 'My Documents'.

The only way to preserve his games will be for him to clone his current OS install with something like Acronis or similar and then transfer it to his new drive.
 
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Soldato
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Read the first post again. Where does it say anything about re-installing windows? Windows is already on an SSD so it's highly unlikely the OP wants to install it on the 2TB drive. :/

The current 500GB games drive is already separate so a straight forward switch and copy will work fine.
 
Soldato
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I imaged my 1TB drive onto a slightly smaller SSD drive using acronis (games and files, not the OS), imaging it actually seems to do it faster than the OS can copy it with its own overheads and cloning does a better job of hidden files etc too should there be any problems.
 
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