Odd question, but just wandering what you do. Do you back them up once downloaded, making life easier if you have to re install your operationg system, or if you have to do a fresh install do you just download the games again (not always great if on a limited bandwidth) Usually I just download them again as being on unlimited bandwidth it hasn't been too much of an issue. But looking at how much I'd have to download again if as am looking at doing a fresh OS install I've opted to do a backup and restore when I install Steam again.
I used to until I got to over 1TB of installed games (not just steam but origin, uplay etc) and now I don't bother. Easy enough to just redownload in the case of something going wrong - even massive games only take a couple of hours to download on a decent connection nowadays I do keep mine on a separate drive (well 2) to my OS though so I shouldn't need to worry if I do a reinstall of my OS.
I used to be able to keep mine on a separate drive but had to down size my system from full blown ATX tower case to mATX. Case I have only allows me to have installed a total of 3 3.5 inch HDD's
I used to always back up my games before. But, I now have a fiber internet connection and so, I do not need to do it anymore.
I have a separate SSD just for Steam, main windows is on its own SSD with very few things installed that would take any time to download.
I used to copy the steamapps folder and copy it back after reinstalling Windows and Steam, but now Steam has it's own 500GB SSD. Not everything is on there, but Steam can kiss my ass before I shell out for 1TB.
Long ago (i.e. many years ago) I used to back them up, but now I always redownload. I have Steam set to download while I play, so I just download a game I want to play and after a session or two, a few more are installed.
Nope as for most of the games i play, there's little to no point... If the backup is more than a month or two old there's invariably a gazillion updates to download... so downloading the entire game from scratch isn't much of an [extra] inconvenience.
Crap internet connection so I have to backup. Something like a 60gb download would take days, I go to my mums who has a 100meg connection then back up the game/s to an external drive and take it back home.
ive got steam games split between a normal hdd and ssd just keep my windows drive on a separate ssd so if I need to reinstall everything's on others drives
Thats one valid reason for doing a backup given not everyone has a super fast internet connection. Looking at what others have done I think I have a spare 2 TB drive so I could put that in and partition it so OS one partition and steam and games on the other.
I don't bother backing them up. I have Windows on a separate drive (or at least a separate partition) so that if Windows goes tits-up then I can just reinstall Steam without having to re-download anything. In fact, I had to reinstall Windows last week, so it was quite handy not having to download 500GB of games all over again
I personally don't keep games installed if I'm not actively playing them - don't see the point. In that sense I generally only have 3-6 games installed at any given time.
I dot around from game to game, and storage space is cheap, so I have no problem with having a decent number of games installed at once. I've got 51 installed just now
I've got them backed up from my RAID array, simply because a failure means losing all of them, and when you're on all 1TB per month download limit... it is a little worrying how fast I can chew through that. I mean... it resets on the 20th every month, and I'm already 200GB+ into it without downloading any huge games that aren't already installed.
Looks like I do the same as most people, Steam games on a different drive to OS, don't back up as downloading wouldn't take long. Even with my not very good fibre, I can download a game overnight when needed.
For game with single player missions I back the game up for saved games, unlocked maps, equipment etc.
