How do I back up my game to an offline drive?

[DivergentDroid]

RDR2 just finished downloading via the Rockstar Launcher. It looks like this isn't just downloaded files that allow me to back it up easily, it's the installed game itself. How do I backup my game? It's 115 gigabytes. I want to zip up the folder and copy it to a drive I keep offline for game storage and that way, I'll have a safe copy of it that will take up less space. Can I do that?  - If I can do that, then, How do I reinstall the game again when I want to play it in the future, do I need the Rockstar Launcher that I first used to download the game? How does all of that work?  Thanks. 

[DivergentDroid]

64 people have read this and no one has a clue? Does no one back up games anymore?

[Jimbatron]

14 hours ago, DivergentDroid said:

64 people have read this and no one has a clue? Does no one back up games anymore?

I assume if I read it correctly you want to move the bulk of the games files to an external HD when you are not playing it and copy it back when you do as it will be quicker than re-installing it, but saves HD space if you aren’t going to play it?

 

For a lot of old games I’d say that’d work fine but I wouldn’t recommend it in this case because of the R* Launcher.

 

The problem is it’s going to try to update the game periodically for you, and it won’t  find the right files to replace because you moved them. I’d say the chance of it introducing some serious bugs is high. Whilst I love R*’s games the launcher is a badly written piece of garbage that has a tendency to break on a good day.

[DivergentDroid]

13 hours ago, Jimbatron said:

I assume if I read it correctly you want to move the bulk of the games files to an external HD when you are not playing it and copy it back when you do as it will be quicker than re-installing it, but saves HD space if you aren’t going to play it?

 

For a lot of old games I’d say that’d work fine but I wouldn’t recommend it in this case because of the R* Launcher.

 

The problem is it’s going to try to update the game periodically for you, and it won’t  find the right files to replace because you moved them. I’d say the chance of it introducing some serious bugs is high. Whilst I love R*’s games the launcher is a badly written piece of garbage that has a tendency to break on a good day.

 Thanks. I did read backing up GTA was possible but of course thats GTA (4 I think) and the post was 5 years old. In that case it was said as long as you keep all the folder names the same and put them in the same place there were originally installed in the launcher would see it but of course I haven't tested this with RDR2. I Never install games to Program Files because I like to keep things as simple as possible for such file transfers and I never install to a drive my operating system (C colon)  is on. The Rockstar Launcher is simply installed to D colon Rockstar Launcher and the game itself is simply installed to D colon RDR2 which is the folder I told it to install into via the launcher when downloading the game. It looks like the Only thing I can do to test it is to make another partition say E colon and test it out to see if it works.