One of the most annoying problems of Steam, is the inability to select custom installation folders for Steam games. All games that are downloaded and installed via Steam are installed in the same folder on the same hard drive.

This can be problematic, as even the biggest hard drives eventually run out of space. Many Steam users help themselves by uninstalling games to free up space on their hard drive, before installing new ones on the system.

Moving Steam to a different hard drive can be another effective option, especially if the other hard drive offers more space than the old one.

Steam itself offers no direct option to move the steam folder to another hard drive. It is however possible to do just that with some manual work. The same workaround can also be used to move Steam to another computer.

Lets assume that the Steam folder is currently located on drive c:, which does not have enough space anymore to store all the Steam games. Drive e: is a new hard drive with lots of free space.

To move Steam from c: to e: perform the following five steps:

• Close Steam, make sure the client is completely closed.
• Locate the SteamApps folder on the c: drive, it is located in Steam > Steamapps, usually in Program Files or Program Files (x86).
• Move the entire folder from drive c: to e: root
• Uninstall Steam completely after the games and files have been moved to the new drive.
• Reboot your computer once
• Install Steam again, this time on drive e:
• Move the Steamapps folder into Steam folder.
• Start Steam. The client will automatically recognize the games in the Steamapps folder and make them available again.

That’s how the Steam folder is moved to another drive or computer. Let me know if you are interested in a tutorial on how to move individual Steam games to another drive.

Steam requires a big fast hard drive if used regularly. This is especially true for all those online games like Counter Strike Source, Team Fortress 2 or Age of Conan that you can purchase at Steam. New maps, patches and multimedia content fill the hard drive over time.

If you are almost at the capacity you might want to move Steam to another hard drive. It could also be that you purchased a faster hard drive and want to make sure that Steam is running on the fastest hardware for maximum effectiveness. Thankfully though moving Steam to another hard drive is not as complicated as it sounds. These are the steps you need to follow:

• Exit Steam
• Copy the steamapps folder that contains all the game data like saves and downloaded contents to another location. The folder is usually located in the Steam root directory.
• Uninstall Steam
• Install Steam on the new hard drive
• Copy the steamapps folder into the new location
• Start Steam. Steam will automatically recognize the steamapps contents and make them available again

The process should not take that long as all the big game related files do not have to be downloaded again. Another unofficial version is floating around the Internet. According to it only the file clientregistry.blob has to be deleted on the computer system. It is after that only a matter of moving the complete Steam folder to the desired location. Steam will automatically repair the shortcuts and entries so that it can be used from that location as usual.