With a new SSD, how do I keep my game installs and saved games?

Im looking to buy a SSD but dont know how to keep all my games and game saves on the current drive, is there anyway that i can do this?

Hey there Chris,

This is a great question, as so many gamers don't know if they can keep their old games and game saves when they upgrade their storage. Upgrading to a new SSD is awesome, but it's not a great experience when you lose your game installations or game saves.

So, if you're using Steam - you can choose your installation path for all of your Steam games, if you haven't already. You can find that by going to Steam, and up the top clicking 'View' and then 'Settings'. From there, you'll need to click 'Downloads' and then at the top of the Downloads section, you'll see 'Steam Library Folders'. Click this - as it lets you install your games on a single, or multiple drives.

Once you've clicked into the Steam Library Folders, you will have access to adding a library folder. Here, you can add in another drive so that Steam will detect it, and allow you to install (or move) your games there. It's quite easy once you get into the menu, and start shifting your games around.

As for your game saves, this is much harder. Each game will store the saved game files somewhere different on your drive, with some of them being found in the game installation folder (in your steamapps folder) and some in your Documents folder in Windows. You'll need to Google things like 'The Witcher 3 game saves' to find out where the games you've got installed, are storing your game saves.

Alternatively, you can clone your SSD and move it to the new drive - but this is something I don't recommend. It's a much smoother, faster experience to format a fresh SSD and start completely new. But, it's an option you can use.

If you have any issues, feel free to reach out and we'll help you along the way!

Last updated: Nov 3, 2020 at 07:10 pm CST