How To Install Game On Mac Hard Drive

Like me, you probably love playing video games on your PC. Steam, an online platform for distributing video game content, likely has a picture of you hanging in their reception area. Your hard drives and SSDs are crammed full of your favorite games, but you also have a huge collection of vintage video games on discs and can’t pass up sweet deals on used video game CDs. Or maybe you’re just getting back into video games and still have an old copy of Max Payne in the closet.

What do you do when your awesome new gaming PC doesn’t come with an optical disk drive (ODD)?

To turn off iCloud Drive entirely, deselect iCloud Drive. If you're using macOS Mojave or earlier, choose Apple menu System Preferences, click iCloud, then click Options next to iCloud Drive. Store in iCloud turns on the Desktop & Documents Folders and Optimize Mac Storage settings. In Photos, choose Photos Preferences, then click iCloud.

Fortunately, there are several options to get you up and playing those games in no time:

Network

If another computer on your network has an ODD, you could share access to that drive and then connect to that computer via the network. Read the End User License Agreement (EULA) for the game you are trying to install to be sure that this is allowed. Many EULA’s limit you to one installation at a time, so if the game is already installed on the machine with the ODD, then uninstall it first before trying to install it on your new machine. Depending upon the speed and reliability of your network, this may prove to be more time and frustration than it’s worth, however.

External CD/DVD Drive

An external CD/DVD drive is the easiest route for those who are having a hard time getting rid of all those shiny plastic discs collecting dust in their house. These have really dropped in price in the past few years and you can pick up a decent external CD/DVD drive for $20. Just connect the drive to an open USB port, pop in your disc, and you’re ready to install your game. Just be sure to keep the disc in the drive if your game checks for the original disc while you’re playing.

You can also use these drives to create an ISO image of your games and movies on CDs and DVDs on your hard drive or USB flash drive. PLEASE don’t be a bonehead and make a copy of your friend’s game. Everyone loses out when people steal; it’s not sharing, so do this only if you own the disc yourself. People have debated the legality of making digital copies of media that you rightfully own, so do your own research first as to the laws relating to this where you live.

Personally, making backup copies of discs that I own is great insurance in case something gets damaged and is a convenient way to store my media, but I never share or sell my copies.

In addition to an external CD/DVD drive, you will need a program that can read your disc and create a disc image. The most common format is .ISO, so these files are referred to as ISO images. Unfortunately Windows doesn’t include utilities for doing this and it’s a bit convoluted in Mac OS, but fortunately there are plenty of free programs available to do this for us.

People prefer different ISO creation programs and they are constantly changing, so I won’t recommend a specific one. A quick search should yield a handful of decent options. After following the creation instructions, you’ll have an ISO image of your game on your hard drive or USB flash drive. Just be aware that CDs and particularly DVDs can hold many gigabytes of data. Be sure you have enough room on your destination drive before you start; 700MB for CDs, 4.7GB for single-layer DVDs, and up to 8.5GB for dual-layer DVDs.

In order to do anything useful with this ISO image, you will need a program that can ‘mount’ the image. Mounting is a fancy way of saying that the ISO image will look like a virtual CD or DVD in your system. Once mounted, you are able to interact with it just like it was a physical disc. If you have Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or Max OS X then you’re all set to mount your ISO image. If you are running an earlier version of Windows, you will need special software to do this.

Again, there are plenty of free programs out there to do this. So follow the directions for your particular flavor of ISO mounting and you’ll end up with a virtual CD/DVD of your game on your hard drive that you can use to install the game on your system. Once you are done playing the game, you can leave it mounted or unmount it to free up some resources if needed. If your game does check for the original disc sometimes while you are playing it, just keep the ISO image mounted. You can also recycle that disc back into the coaster that it was always meant to be.

USB Flash Drive or External SSD

USB flash drives have also come down in price with 16 GB versions (enough space to hold all of the data from a dual-layer DVD) going for well under $10. You may elect to use a USB flash drive if you have limited space on your hard drive, have some weird compulsion to physically organize your storage media, or intend to install the game on another computer that you own.

But can you use that USB flash drive to just the game on someone else’s computer? Of course!

To play your game from your USB flash drive or external SSD on another computer, you will need to make the drive bootable. There are many ways to do this, including software that you can buy or even USB flash drives that come preloaded with a lightweight operating system specifically for playing games. You can also create a bootable Windows (Windows to Go or WinToUSB) or Linux USB flash drive.

Again, search for a solution that meets your specific needs and following the instructions. USB 3.0 with its 5Gbps data rate is highly recommended, though some USB 2.0 systems running at high-speed might work as well. It will depend on the game that you are playing and the hardware that you’re using.

Once you are done playing, simply shut the computer down or reboot and no trace of your gameplay will be left!

How Do You Buy PC Games?

Do you still have PC games on discs or have you made the jump to downloading your games? If downloading, which platform gets most of your money?

Brithny updated on Dec 16, 2020 to PC Transfer|How-to Articles

Top 2 Ways to Move Games to External Hard Drive

Games often take up a lot of PC space. If you install too many games on your internal drive, you may easily receive a C drive full or not enough space waring. Usually, for most gamers and common users, using an external hard drive is a great way to have more storage space.

You can have all the gaming power without having to work on the inside of your computer. All you need to do is plug in the external hard drives, and move PC games to an external hard drive in two ways. Check all ways for straightforward moving, move games to an external hard drive is an easy thing through PC game mover - EaseUS Todo PCTrans.

Workable Solutions	Step-by-step Troubleshooting
Fix 1. How to Move Games to External Hard Drive with PC Game Mover	(Applies to move games & Platforms in one click) Download EaseUS Todo PCTrans on both PC > Choose transfer mode...Full steps
Fix 2. How to Transfer Games to External Hard Drive PC Manually	(Applies to move game one by one)Open Windows Explorer and create a game folder on...Full steps

Also read:How to Run Application from an External Hard Drive

How to Move Games to External Hard Drive with PC Game Mover

Applies to: transfer all programs to an external hard drive.

Compared with copying and pasting, EaseUS Todo PCTrans is much better. Avoid the time-wasting process, installing games on an external hard drive only takes a few seconds. You can take this professional game mover to change the program install location. This PC game mover tool can 100% solve how to move games to an external hard drive.

Trust EaseUS on data moving, we are ready to solve how to transfer games to the external hard drive on PC for you:

As a data migrating software, this PC transfer tool helps transfer your data, applications, and account settings from one PC to another in one click.

Transfer applications, Windows accounts from one PC to another
Transfer or back up data from one PC to another
Transfer Steam to SSD, or move other games to another drive
Recover data from a dead/unbootable PC
Free up C drive space, and clean up junk files

Download this software and directly launch this software to help you move games or apps from PC to an external hard drive.

Step 1. Connect your external hard drive to your computer. Open EaseUS Todo PCTrans and select 'App Migration > Start'.

Step 2. Find and choose the applications (marked as 'Yes') that you want to transfer. You can select multiple apps.

Click the triangle icon and select your external hard drive as the destination to store the apps.

Step 3. Then, click 'Transfer' to move your programs to an external hard drive

Speaking of install games on an external hard drive, some users may want to know what is the difference between playing games on a hard drive and an external hard drive. The fact is the external device doesn't load as fast as the internal hard drive, and if your device is randomly disconnected from the PC, your game data will lose.

If you need a method to recover data from external hard drive, you will get a gut punch.

How to Transfer Games to External Hard Drive PC Manually

Applies to: copy and paste portable programs to an external drive.

Although the copying and pasting worked like a charm sometimes, this method can not make sure 100% program moving than EaseUS Todo PCTrans in transferring games from PC to external hard drive. As there are a variety of games, manually copying to an external disk may miss the necessary components for some specific games.

These methods may not work as well for games installed without a manager like Steam or Origin. Here, I'd like to take Origin/Steam/Blizzard games for example. In the end, we also introduce a general method to move games to an external hard drive in windows 10.

Case 1 - How to Move Origin Games to Another Drive

How To Install Mac Software

Step 1. Open Windows Explorer and create a folder on the external hard drive where you'll store your games.

Step 2. Head to your current Origin folder and find the folder for the game you want to move. Copy it to the new location, and delete the old files.

Step 3. Open Origin and head to 'Origin > Application Settings > Installs & Saves'. Under 'Game Library Location', click the 'Change location' button and direct it to the folder on your new hard drive.

Close origin completely, even from the background. This only affects newly-installed games, so your current library will not be affected.

Step 4. Return to 'My Game Library' and click the 'Download' button to re-install the game.

Instead of re-downloading the game, Origin will detect the existing files there and make any necessary minor changes. When it's done, you should be able to play the game as usual.

Case 2 - How to Move Steam Games to External Hard Drive

Step 1. Connect your external hard drive to your PC. Open Windows Explorer and create a new folder on the external hard drive.

Step 2. Open Steam, then click Steam >Settings >Downloads >Steam Library Folders >Add Library Folder > Choose the folder on the external hard drive.

Step 3. Open Library, choose the game you want to move, right-click it and select Properties.

Step 4. Choose the Local Files tab > Move Install Folder

The steps only suit to move a game each time. If you want to move more than one game or get a better method, you can read how to move steam game to another drive.

Case 3 - How to Move Blizzard Games to Another Drive

The manual solution for moving Blizzard games to an external hard drive relates to uninstall and reinstall. It will spend more time in the redownloading process. We also provide more than one fix about moving Blizzard games to another drive.

Step 1. Open the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app, select the icon for the game you want to uninstall, select Options >Uninstall Game.

Step 2. In the Blizzard Battle.net desktop app, choose Install >Choose Change under Install Location section. Then select Start Install.

Case 4 - How to Transfer Games to External Hard Drive PC (General)

Case 4 applies to move games on all game platforms to an external hard drive. In general, no matter what games you install, you will find the default game location store in C:Program FilesWindows Apps.

Step 1. Connect external hard drive on your computer.

Step 2. Follow the default path to copy and paste your games to another drive.

Even though the method is workable, you can not copy some hidden files to the destination, which causes your games to fail in play. So why not try the reliable one to copy with transferring games from pc to external hard drive? Way back to use EaseUS Todo PCTrans.

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