wpegg: You savegames are another matter. It depends how the games stores them. If they are stored locally within the game then it should not be seen, however many games use My Documents, or other registry based paths, so you can't be sure you'll sweep up all of them just by moving your base games folder. If they are using such locations then the games should continue to work, but the saves will remain on your primary disk.
Does that help?
Maddy627: Thanks for the first query. Just got the T5 today and I'm really hyped to use it. Like I said I'm playing the witcher 3 and the saves never synced online. So will I have any luck literally copy pasting the entire GOG folder?
nightcraw1er.488: Copy the installer files to your external hard drive (goto your library on the website and download the installers from ther, or via backup form galaxy). You can then re-install the game at any time. You can also save save games, documents, mods etc. with it. A good structure up front is a good idea, I use:
<game name> [<year>] [<platform>]
eg;
Daymare 1998 [2019] [PC] / daymare installer part1.exe
Daymare 1998 [2019] [PC] / daymare installer part2.exe
Daymare 1998 [2019] [PC] / docs / manual.doc
It is really not a good idea to keep an installed version, it takes up far more room (i.e. costing you much more in storage), and lots of things can break such as registry entries, dependancies etc. Also, with lots of files you r more likley to get bit rot, and it would be more cumbersome to hash check all the files.
So, don't be lazy and rely on clientwares. Store your installers!
Maddy627: Hey there nightC. So, i'm really sorry but I am a complete noob when it comes to all this advanced stuff. Like I have just bought one game off of steam that is CS:GO XD. I would really appreciate if you could break this down into simpler terms. Like beginning from the fact are the installers and the installed games interchangeably used?
Its all one and the same.
If you use Galaxy, that program downloads and runs the necessary files for you for install, but doesn't store those files for later, unless you select that option - I don't use galaxy so cant help with what the option is.
The other way, log in to the website and goto your account under you nickname for the store, and select Games. This will take you to your library. In there you can select any of your games (by clicking once. The game will expand and show you Install Game with Galaxy, and further down Download offline backups which when you click that shows various different files depending on the game in question. Now an installer has at minimum one EXE file, this is the file you actually run to install the game. The game can also have any number of additional BIN files, these are installer resource files that the EXE needs in full and in the same directory, to be able to install the game. So say for instance I look at Warlords 3 in my library, I see what is in attached picture warlords3. For this one there is only one EXE file, I download that in full and I can run that one file to install warlords 3. You will note that to the right are additional files like manuals and such like.
Now if I do the same for A Plague Tale (pic = plague) you can see there are 10 parts to the installer, all of these need to be downloaded in full and in the same directory for you to be able to run part 1 which is the EXE. Otherwise it will say its missing a part.
Now those files we talked about, EXE and BIN (plus all the other extras and DLC - you will note on Plague there is one DLC which is a separate EXE file), you can copy those files wherever you want, be it to a CD, an external hard drive etc. This is the key benefit to what is meant by DRM free, in that those files are yours to keep. What most of us do is to download those files and keep them on external hard drives, generally to back up you need at least two separate devices holding the data (but more is generally good). In this way, if you want to play the game some time in the future, you just copy those files back from your esternal hard drive and run the installer.
Now saves. This is an interesting one, and is not standardised, so saves could be located in several places:
In the install directory - this is the place where the game is actually installed to (e.g. c:\mygames)
In the documents folder.
In the hidden user area which you can get to by opening Windows Explorer and putting into the address bar: %APPDATA%
A good reference for where these are stored (and lots of other information) can be found on:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home NOw saves themselves come in all forms, it could be a directory of files for each save, it could be a file for each save, it could be one file for all saves, there is no default so thats a per case basis. You should however be able to copy the entity, be that a file or directory out to your backup store, and then if you ever want to go back maybe to play the game again from that point, or restore your save to that point, copy that file/directory back to the original location. For example if red alert stores my saves in:
c:\red alert\saves
Then I can copy the files from there to my backup and uninstall the game. 5 years down the line I think, I would like to play red alert again, so I reinstall the game from the installers, and then copy my saves over to c:\red alert\saves and I am back to where I was before. Whilst galaxy has the ability with at least some games to store your saves online, you have very little control over that, you can't make backups, and if the net goes down then you cant get at it.
As a final note, you should get used to handling files, what they are, what they do etc. on PC if you are going to use one. Its a fundamental skill to learn if using a PC. Clients like Galaxy try to make the experience simpler and more console like by hiding the complexity, which if all you use your PC for is a couple of games then maybe fine. For any real use though you need to learn how to store and use files.
A final final note, a good folder structure on your external drive will help you in the long run. I have mine setup as
<Letter>\<Series>\<Game> [<year>][<platform>]\<store>
<Letter>\<Series>\<Game> [<year>][<platform>]\mods
<Letter>\<Series>\<Game> [<year>][<platform>]\docs
<Letter>\<Series>\<Game> [<year>][<platform>]\saves
So if I talk about Baldurs Gate, a folder and file structure might look like:
B\Baldurs Gate\Baldurs Gate [1996] [PC]\GOG\baldurs_gate.exe
B\Baldurs Gate\Baldurs Gate [1996] [PC]\mods\BIg World Setup\big_world_setup.exe
B\Baldurs Gate\Baldurs Gate [1996] [PC]\docs\Manual.docx
B\Baldurs Gate\Baldurs Gate [1996] [PC]\saves\save1.sav
B\Baldurs Gate\Baldurs Gate [1996] [PC]\saves\save2.sav
