- Manually Transfer PC Games to an External Hard Drive
- Move Games to an External Hard Drive with PC Game Mover
Games often take a lot of space in your PC space. If you install too many games on your internal drive, you may easily receive a C drive full or not enough space waring. Using an external hard drive is a great way to have more storage space. Usually, there's an external hard drive for most gamers and common users. Gaming requires a lot of memory on your computer for games, and external HDDs take the pressure off your PCs. You can have all the gaming power without having to work on the inside of your computer. All you need to do is plug in the external hard drives, and move PC games to an external hard drive in two ways.
Steam question: Can I run Steam games off an external SSD? Just set the path in Steam for the external hard drive. That's how I run my games. What I noticed in Steam for Mac is that the alias it wants to make points to files in such a way that it has to launch Steam first. Jan 23, 2017 Moving Steam games to a different folder or hard drive is finally easy. And Steam wouldn’t even register a game's presence if you moved it over from an external drive. Yes and sort of. External hard drives tend to run slower because of their interface/cable (usually USB). As far as installing games go, you can install steam anywhere on your laptop and set up the game libraries/install locations somewhere else, like an external drive.
Method 1. Manually Transfer PC Games to an External Hard Drive
The most straightforward way to transfer PC games to an external hard drive is manually copying and paste the game. Before you are going to try this method, you must know that this method only works for a few programs - the portable programs. As there are a variety of games, manually copying to an external disk may miss the necessary components for some specific games. This method may not work as well for games installed without a manager like Steam or Origin, but for everything I tested, it worked like a charm. Here, I'd like to take Origin games for example.
Step 1. Open Windows Explorer and create a folder on the external hard drive where you'll store your games.
Step 2. Head to your current Origin folder and find the folder for the game you want to move. Copy it to the new location, and delete the old files.

Step 3. Open Origin and head to 'Origin > Application Settings > Installs & Saves'. Under 'Game Library Location', click the 'Change location' button and direct it to the folder on your new hard drive.
Close origin completely, even from the background. This only affects newly-installed games, so your current library will not be affected.
Step 4. Return to 'My Game Library' and click the 'Download' button to re-install the game.
Instead of re-downloading the game, Origin will detect the existing files there and make any necessary minor changes. When it's done, you should be able to play the game as usual.
Mac Run A Steam Game Off An External Hard Drive 2 Terabytes
Method 2. Move Games to an External Hard Drive with PC Game Mover
Compared with method 1, this method is much better. You don't need to manually copy and paste the games to change their location. You can easily make it by using professional game mover - EaseUS Todo PCTrans. This PC transfer software helps transfer your data, applications, and account settings from one PC to another in one click. Besides, the 'App Migration' option enables you to transfer an application from one drive to an external hard drive. What else can this tool do for you? Let's see.
- Transfer or back up data from one PC to another
- Transfer Windows accounts from one PC to another
- Transfer Steam to SSD, or move other games to another drive
- Free up C drive space, and clean up junk files
Download this software and directly launch this software to help you move games or apps from PC to an external hard drive.
Step 1. Connect your external hard drive to your computer. Open EaseUS Todo PCTrans and select 'App Migration > Start'.
Step 2. Find and choose the applications (marked as 'Yes') that you want to transfer. You can select multiple apps.
Click 'Browse' and select your external hard drive as the destination to store the apps.
Step 3. Then, click 'Transfer' to move your programs to an external hard drive
People Also Ask

In addition to game moving, most users are interested in the following questions:
Mac Run A Steam Game Off An External Hard Drive Windows 10
1. Can I use an external hard drive for gaming?
Yes, you can. The best external hard drives are extremely easy to use. All you need to do is plug them in. Besides, an external hard drive can be a great way to install games on multiple computers. Generally speaking, no file formatting is needed to use an external hard drive for gaming.
2. Can I move other apps to an external hard drive?
EaseUS Todo PCTrans supports to move a lot of programs to an external hard drive, including Microsoft Office, Adobe, Google Chrome and more.
3. Is SSD or HDD better for gaming?
An SSD is much better for gaming than an HDD is. But SSD is not without fault. SSDs are not that good as long-term storage solutions, both because of their shorter life-span and because high-capacity SSD prices are bordering on ludicrous.
4. Can you run apps from external hard drive Mac?
Mac Run A Steam Game Off An External Hard Drive Mac
Yes, Macs don't care where programs are launched from - there is no especially blessed location, so you can run them off an external drive.