Christ Centered Gamer

Hey guys!

My dad needs to reset my computer before school starts again, so I have been backing things up to an external hard-drive. I tried to back-up Steam and it wouldn't show up in the files on the hard-drive. Is my library saved on their site so that I can just re-download and install all my stuff? or is there a way to back-up all my Steam files? If there's a specific way to do it (other than drag-and-dropping the file) could someone explain how I would do this?

All you games you own on Steam are tied to your account. You can install. remove, re-install, install on another computer just fine. Don't worry about your games.

Besides, just picking up and moving your games to a new computer will not work. Most games have entries in the computer registry that get filed in on installation. Without those, your game will not run.

As for your game saves, some of them are stored on the Steam Servers, but some of them stay on your hard drive, so you'd want to back those up.
I'm not on my home computer, so I can't fully verify, but I believed they are mostly stored in (If you are on Windows 7, if not, it's probably a similar location):
C:\Documents and Settings\<Your User>\Local Settings\Application Data\<Game Studio Name>\<Game Name>
These are also hidden files, so be sure to set your folder settings to view them. You also might want to check on a per-game basis. Some might store it elsewhere, like in a saved games folder in My Documents or in their SteamApps folder under the Steam Directory. (if you simply wanted to know where your games are located, it's in the Steam directory, under steamapps.)

Ah ok. Thanks!

Oh, even though you most likely already found it with the help of Arch,
there is another folder called "my games" in the "my documents" folder,
that is where you can the Terraria folder with holds all of your Terraria related saves.
(Namely the worlds and character saves.)

looks like those responses got ya covered

I'm pretty sure there's also an option to back up game files either in one of the menus or in a game's properties.

Noobyhead99 wrote:I'm pretty sure there's also an option to back up game files either in one of the menus or in a game's properties.

There is: At the top menu > Steam (far left) > Backup and Restore Games

Also, some games, like Batman: Arkham Asylum erase your saves everytime you reinstall the game, as some stupid DRM tactic. Though the steam back ups might remedy this.

On the other hand, Arkham City keeps your saves on a cloud server, I believe.