How to Transfer Games to an External Hard Drive - Tutorial

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Can I play games from an external hard drive? Absolutely! Games often take up a significant amount of PC storage space. If you've installed too many on your internal drive, you might find yourself running out of room on your C drive all too quickly. In general, using an external hard drive is a great way to get more storage for most gamers and regular users.

You don't have to crack open your PC's case to get all that gaming power – you just plug in an external hard drive and move your PC games to it in one of two ways.

Stop riffling through your files. To save you time, we have distilled two reliable approaches.

If you prefer an automated game migration solution, click the “Game Mover Tool” in the table. If you'd rather manually save your games to an external hard drive without using third-party software, opt for the “Manual Method” in Section 2.

How to Automatically Move Games to an External Hard Drive

Check all the direct ways to move games. It's very easy to move games to an external hard drive with PC Game Mover - Todo PCTrans Free. You can use this professional game mover to change the program installation location for free. This PC game mover can 100% solve how to move games to an external hard drive issue.

• Move to a new PC: Steam, Origin, League of Legends, Blizzard.
• Move to a new hard drive: DIABLO, WORLD OF WARCRAFT,
• OVERWATCH, HEARTHSTONE, HEROES OF THE STORM, and more.
• Migrate your games and apps in 3 easy steps.

Download this software and run it directly to help you move games or apps from your PC to an external hard drive.

Step 1. Connect the external hard drive to your computer. Launch Todo PCTrans and select “App Migration > Start.”

Select App Migration

Step 2: Find and select the app(s) you want to transfer (labeled as “Yes”). You can choose multiple apps.

Click the triangle icon, then select your external hard drive as the location to save the application.

Step 3: Click “Move” to transfer the program to the external hard drive.

When it comes to installing games on an external hard drive, some users might wonder – what's the difference between playing games from a hard drive or an external one?

The problem is that external drives tend to be slower than internal ones, and if your device disconnects unexpectedly from your computer, you could lose your game.

Please read:

How to manually move games to an external hard drive on PC

While the copy and paste method works sometimes, it's not a guarantee that all your games will transfer from your PC to the external hard drive. Todo PCTrans does the job instead.

Here, I'll take Origin, Steam, and Blizzard games as examples. Lastly, we'll look at a generic way to move games to an external hard drive on Windows 11/10.

Move an Installed Origin Game to Another Hard Drive
How to Move a Steam Game to an External Hard Drive
Move a Blizzard Game to Another Hard Drive
How to Move a PC Game to Another Hard Drive

Don't hesitate to share this guide and these methods with other users who want to move their games from PC to external hard drive.

Case 1 - Moving an Installed Origin Game to Another Hard Drive

Step 1: Open File Explorer and create a folder on the external hard drive where you want to store your games.

Step 2: Go to your existing Origin Games folder, find the game you want to move, and copy its folder to the new location. Remove the old files.

Step 3: Launch Origin, then go to “Origin > Application Settings > Install and Save.” Under “Game Library Location,” click the “Change” button, and point it to the folder on your new hard drive.

This will only affect new installs, so your existing library won't be impacted.

Step 4. Go back to your "My Games" library and click "Download" to reinstall the game.

Origin will detect the existing files in this location and make the necessary adjustments without having to redownload the game. Once that's done, you should be able to play as normal.

Further reading: Transfer Xbox Games to PC

Case 2 - How to Move Steam Games to an External Hard Drive [Back to Table of Contents](#0)

Step 1: Connect your external hard drive to your computer. Open File Explorer, and create a new folder on the external drive.

2. Open Steam, click “Steam” > “Settings” > “Downloads” > “Library Folders” > “Add Library Folder,” and then select the folder on your external drive.

Step 3: Open the library, right-click on the game you want to move, and select “Properties.”

< strong > Step 4. Select the < strong > Local Files tab and then < strong > Browse Local Files

These steps only work for moving one game at a time. If you want to move multiple games or find a better way to do it, read how to move Steam games to another drive.

Case 3 - Moving Blizzard Games to Another Hard Drive

Manually moving Blizzard games to an external hard drive involves uninstalling and reinstalling, which takes more time with redownloads. We also have several solutions available to help you move Blizzard games to another drive.

Step 1. Open the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app, click on the game you want to uninstall, and then click Options > Uninstall.

2. In the Battle.net desktop app, go to Install > Install Location, then select Change. Click Install.

Please share these cases on social media to help more users.

Case 4 - How to Move a PC Game to Another Hard Drive (Generic Method)

Case 4 is for moving games from all platforms to an external hard drive. Regardless of the game you install, you'll find that the default game storage location is in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps .

Step 1: Connect an external hard drive to your computer.

Step 2. Copy and paste the game to another drive using the default path.

While this method works, it doesn't copy over some hidden files to the destination, which can cause the game to fail running. So why not try a reliable way to transfer games from PC to external hard drive? Go back to using the Todo PCTrans tool.

Game migration, file migration, account migration!

As a data migration tool, this PC transfer utility lets you move your data, applications, and account settings from one computer to another with a single click.

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• Migrate apps and Windows accounts from one computer to another, for example, to move Microsoft Office.
• Transfer or back up data between computers
• Move Steam games to an SSD, or shift other games to another drive
• Recover data from a non-bootable PC
• Free up space on your C drive and clean up junk files in Windows 10

Frequently Asked Questions about Moving Games to an External Hard Drive (UTF-8)

In addition to game portability, most users are also interested in:

**1. Can I play games from an external hard drive?**

Yes, you can. The best external hard drives are very simple to use, plugging right in. Additionally, an external hard drive is a great way to install games across multiple computers. Generally, you shouldn't need to format the drive to use it for gaming.

< strong > 2. How can I move the game from drive C to drive D?

• Select "App Migration."
• Choose the game you want to transfer.
• Select D: as the destination.
• Tap "Migrate" to start the process.

3. Can you run Mac apps from an external drive?

Yes, the Mac doesn't care where an app comes from – there are no specially protected locations, so you can run them from an external drive.