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General discussion (archive)Is anyone else here backing up their Steam games?(50 posts)(50 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 24, 2012
Title says it all. I'm thinking about slowly backing up my Steam games and storing them in DVDs (the smaller ones) or HDDs (the larger ones), starting from the older games which won't be receiving any updates soon.

Do you find that the Steam backup function works well or are you using a different method (in which ae if you do not want to share publicly, plese PM me)?
Posted February 24, 2012
Never used the built-in backup function; I just copied the whole directory within steamapps to my external HDD.
Posted February 24, 2012
Perhaps I will at some point for nerves sake, but I'd use an external HD instead.
Posted February 24, 2012
I did back up a few bigger games.
Steam back up thingy works great as far as I can see, don't have much experience with it though.
It will also compress the files so a 5GB game will be around 2,5 to 3GBs.
Posted February 24, 2012
i do. at least i try to. i have a 640GB external but it's not large enough for my entire Steam folder, and that does not include SteamWorks games i have on DVDs.

i wasn't aware Steam's built-in back-up function compresses the game data. i might start using that instead of just copying the entire steamapps folder.
Posted February 24, 2012
My internet is fast enough to download most of my games within a few minutes so I haven't really thought about backing any of them up.
Posted February 24, 2012
I know that's not what you're asking, but may I ask about your motivation? Because to reinstall from a backup, you need the Steam client anyway, so it doesn't protect you from Steam's eventual disappearance, and looking at the last fifteen years, bandwidth is becoming ever broader and cheaper, so downloading a 5 GB game off Steam five years from now will probably be akin to downloading a 500 MB game today -- not really a big deal.

I'm genuinely curious, and apologise if this seems like an attempt to hijack your thread. I have personally stopped backing up everything that I haven't made myself; I just don't see a point to it any more. The internet is a far better repository of, well, everything.
Posted February 24, 2012
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Titanium: Perhaps I will at some point for nerves sake, but I'd use an external HD instead.
Perhaps this is the easiest method, but for bigger libraries you'd need at least 2TBs, not to mention even more.
Posted February 24, 2012
It's probably better to just backup the folder in steamapps and .rar it. That way if Steam ever goes down, you can very easily crack the backed up games. The official backups require you to be online to install.

To answer the question in the title, yes I back up the small number of games (2) that I've actually bought there. The ones from Indie bundles I usually have a backed up DRM free version of anyway.
Post edited February 24, 2012 by SirPrimalform
Posted February 24, 2012
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thebum06: My internet is fast enough to download most of my games within a few minutes so I haven't really thought about backing any of them up.
This basically, I can have most any game up and running in an hour tops usually if not minutes. 5MB/s is nice for that :)
Posted February 24, 2012
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bazilisek: I know that's not what you're asking, but may I ask about your motivation? Because to reinstall from a backup, you need the Steam client anyway, so it doesn't protect you from Steam's eventual disappearance, and looking at the last fifteen years, bandwidth is becoming ever broader and cheaper, so downloading a 5 GB game off Steam five years from now will probably be akin to downloading a 500 MB game today -- not really a big deal.

I'm genuinely curious, and apologise if this seems like an attempt to hijack your thread. I have personally stopped backing up everything that I haven't made myself; I just don't see a point to it any more. The internet is a far better repository of, well, everything.
backing up your Steam games because you fear what might happen if Valve went bust is kinda silly anyway since you'd still need the Steam client and Valve's verification servers to re-install the games, unless you intend to crack the games, but then you might as well download ISOs off the 'bay...

i back up my Steam games simply so i don't have to redownload everything again if i have to (or want to) format my hard drive. at 1.5MB/s, downloading beyond 500GB of game data is not really all that cool...
Posted February 24, 2012
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bazilisek: ...
I don't mind. Assuming Steam bites the dust at some point in the far future (yes, I do not believe Valve will go bankrupt tomorrow morning, in fact I think Steam as a service will continue on even under different owners), I'd like to believe Valve in a final act of appreciation to their customers will release Steam as an emulator-like program. I just want to be on the safe side if at some point the servers go down and lock you out of your games.
Posted February 24, 2012
i have backup of most of the games in steam using the steam backup ,it works great some time later in next month or so , will be out without internet for 2-3 months , it will be the real test for steam to see how well the offline mode as well backups work
Post edited February 24, 2012 by liquidsnakehpks
Posted February 24, 2012
I used to backup my Steam games along with cracks, 'just in case'. I've never considered using DVDs, too much hassle with that. I haven't even got a proper dvd reader in my PC. There was a separate shared folder for that on my home NAS. But today I'm not that bothered about it. I buy games on sales for next to nothing, rarely return to previously played titles anyway due to the lack of time and number of games being released. I'm not going to kill myself if Steam is out of business.
Posted February 24, 2012
I didn't until recently. I can download games really fast, I would not gain much time, if any, by backing up and restoring.
But after seeing how easy you can loose access to all your games I did start to backup them on DVDs. By backup I mean downloading the .iso and crack from torrents.
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General discussion (archive)Is anyone else here backing up their Steam games?(50 posts)(50 posts)
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