Steam Updates and USBs

[opel80uk]

Hi All,

Quick question - My internet is pretty slow at home, so does anyone know if it's possible to say download the patches for a Steam game elsewhere, and then add them into the Steam folders on my PC at home, rather than wait the 8 hours for Steam to download them at home? Would that work just the same?

Many thanks!

[jim]

Yes, it is. On Steam, you can click "Steam" on the main menu at the top, pick the "Backup and Restore Games" option, and it will create a zipped file containing the game files you'd like to backup. Then you can transport those files over to another PC, and restore them using the same menu option.

IIRC, they don't even have to be downloaded on the same account.

[herulach]

you can certainly do that with full games, not sure about patches though.

[=assassin=]

That's the thing though, the full game download will always include the latest updates, so it would work, just that it'd obviously be a huge download in some cases.

[opel80uk]

Thanks for the help guys.

You all seem to be confirming what I was thinking. I normally buy the Disk version of games, install, and then steam will update them. But say for Starcraft 2 for example, it was an 11gb update so too ages with my rubbish internet.

So am I right in thinking that, unless I take the disk version and install that to the PC with the fast internet as well, I’d have to download the entire game to the other PC to get the fully patched version? And there’s no way to add a patch gotten elsewhere, say the 2k support site for a game, and then manually insert that patch into the steam folders?

[Ferral]

Steam automatically patches and updates the game, there is no way of manually installing patches to games in your Steam library.

You can backup your games to a pen drive or external drive and then restore that backup to another computer to save downloading the file again, what then happens is when you log into Steam it verifies your ownership and unlocks the content on your second machine. So you could patch up on a machine with fast internet, backup the game to a pen drive or external hard drive, restore the backup to machine with slow internet and you are sorted till the next patch lands.

Other than that if it is a game that is primarily single player and it is working just fine you can actually turn off updates so save you having to wait for a patch to download before being able to play.

[GeorgeStorm]

Thanks for the help guys.

You all seem to be confirming what I was thinking. I normally buy the Disk version of games, install, and then steam will update them. But say for Starcraft 2 for example, it was an 11gb update so too ages with my rubbish internet.

So am I right in thinking that, unless I take the disk version and install that to the PC with the fast internet as well, I’d have to download the entire game to the other PC to get the fully patched version? And there’s no way to add a patch gotten elsewhere, say the 2k support site for a game, and then manually insert that patch into the steam folders?

As far as I'm aware you'd have to download the entire game yes, rather than just the patch, unless the patch is it's own executable rather than integrated into the game's own software.

[Bagnaj97]

Steam is quite happy running on an external HDD, you could put your install on an external and take it elsewhere for updates. Loading times will be slower over USB, but it shouldn't be too bad, especially if you use USB 3.0.

[jim]

So am I right in thinking that, unless I take the disk version and install that to the PC with the fast internet as well, I’d have to download the entire game to the other PC to get the fully patched version?

Yes.

And there’s no way to add a patch gotten elsewhere, say the 2k support site for a game, and then manually insert that patch into the steam folders?

Not that I know of.

[opel80uk]

Thanks all for the help guys. I think the external drive is probably the way to go, as sometimes my internet is painfully slow!

Thanks again!

[herulach]

do yourself a favour and just use it to move stuff round though, don't run games off it, it will be tediouser than a tedious thing.

[Bagnaj97]

do yourself a favour and just use it to move stuff round though, don't run games off it, it will be tediouser than a tedious thing.

If it's USB3 it shouldn't be too painful. If it's a USB 2 drive then this (unless you like long loading times)!!

[opel80uk]

do yourself a favour and just use it to move stuff round though, don't run games off it, it will be tediouser than a tedious thing.

Ah yes, sorry should have explained myself better. That's what I was planning on doing, just saving the files and then transferring back across from the external to internal. It's not that often really, and I'll only do it for large updates and any new games I get.

Thanks for the advice, very helpful.