Steam Games Disappeared From External Hard Drive, Severe Gameguard related issues leading to black screens and PC hard crashes which are happening on a brand new PC that only has Steam, Discord, and Helldivers II + Gameguard installed on it. What happened? UPDATE: Setting my download directory to my external hard drive wouldn't work, so I reinstalled Steam, and then it let me. Steam still won't see that and wants me to download all my games again. but when i check the hard drives file, they were still there and where fully functioning. and when i put back my external hard drive and opened steam, my games were missing. External hard drives are not recommended for use with Steam or Steam's games. All the games that I downloaded onto it disappeared from my library and steam said they were deleted. Specifically, copy the C:\\Program Files\\Steam\\steamapps folder to an external hard drive. Apr 11, 2026 · To ensure a successful recovery of games, back up your entire Steam folder to an external drive before making any system changes, such as a fresh Windows installation or moving to an SSD. Find in-depth gaming news and hands-on reviews of the latest video games, video consoles, and accessories. zi0y, lho, 9dzyd, gvngr9, ump, ragaziv2, kkx9, r7ff6seu, sxay1, c4x0,