How to Move a PC Game to Another Hard Drive (Without Rebooting)

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So you’re running out of hard drive space (perhaps on your fast but tiny solid state drive) and need to move a few PC games to another hard drive. Do not delete or re-download them! In fact, you can move your games to a new disc without having to wait hours to reinstall each one.

There are many ways to do this, but in my experience most of the solutions can be divided into two categories. This is how each method works.

Option One: Create Symbolic Links with the Steam Mover

Despite its name,Steam Mover is a great app that will move any game – Steam, Origin, or any other – and play it without having to reinstall it. It does this by creating a symbolic link in the old location, so your computer thinks everything is in one place, but all this space-consuming data is actually on a different hard drive.

Here’s how to use it:

  1. DownloadSteam Mover and launch it. It’s completely portable, so you don’t need to install anything – just run the EXE file.
  2. At the top of the window on the left, select the folder where your game is currently located. On the right, navigate to where you want to move the game. (If the folder doesn’t exist, you can create it now.)
  3. Select your game from the list and click the blue arrow at the bottom.
  4. Steam Mover will open a black Command Prompt window showing the progress of the copy. Let it run, and when it’s over, your game should be in a new folder with a “shortcut” in the original folder. You should be able to launch it from Steam, Origin or from this shortcut as if it had never moved.

That’s all. You can repeat the process with any number of games and move them back at any time by reopening the Steam Mover and clicking the blue “left” arrow at the bottom to move them back.

You can also create symbolic links yourself without the help of the Steam Mover, but the Steam Mover makes this incredibly easy.

Option two: move the game and direct the game manager to a new location

If you’d rather not download additional software, this is optional – both Steam and Origin have ways to “detect” installed games after you’ve moved them. You just need to do the right things in the right order. If you are using Steam:

  1. Create a folder in a new location where you will store your games. If you are using Steam, you will need to do this through Steam. Go to Settings> Downloads> Steam Library Folders and click Add Library Folder.
  2. Go to the new Steam library folder and create a new folder in it called steamapps . Then create a folder in steamapps called common .
  3. Go to your current Steam folder and find the folder with the game you want to move. You will most likely find it in steamapps/common . Copy the game folder, for example “Borderlands 2”, into the new steamapps/common you created in step 2.
  4. Open Steam, right click on the game you are moving and select “Delete Local Content”. This will remove the game from its original location.
  5. When done, click the Install button to reinstall the game. From the Select a Location drop-down list, select the Steam folder on your new hard drive.
  6. Instead of re-downloading the game (which can take several hours), Steam will detect the existing files there and make the necessary minor changes. When this is done, you can play the game as usual.

If you’re moving your Origin game, the steps are very similar, but a little simpler:

  1. Open Windows Explorer and create a folder in a new location where you will store your games.
  2. Go to your current Origin folder and find the folder with the game you want to move. Copy it to a new location and delete old files.
  3. Open Origin and go to Origin> App Settings> Advanced. In the Downloaded Games section, click the Change button and direct it to a folder on your new hard drive. Don’t worry, this will only affect newly installed games, so your current library won’t be affected.
  4. Return to the My Games window and click the Download button to reinstall the game. Instead of re-downloading the game (which can take several hours), Origin will detect the existing files and make the necessary minor changes. When this is done, you will be able to play the game as usual.
  5. If you want to install future games on your old hard drive, repeat step 3 with the old location.

This method may not work also for games installed without a manager like Steam or Origin, but for everything I’ve tested it worked fine.

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