Fortnite is without a doubt one of the most popular games of recent years. It is also good at taking up a lot of hard disk space. Here we will therefore go through how to move the game to another hard drive, internal and external.
As games become more advanced both graphically and game mechanically, they also take up more and more space. Although the development on the hard drive front is also rolling on, far from all computers equipped with hard drives are capable of hosting any number of games. Fortnite currently occupies, for example, a full 66 GB ( Gigabyte ). A number that is also built on after each update of the game.
If you have a hard drive built into your computer of maybe 250 GB and Windows 10 plus some programs take up about 50 GB, it will quickly run out of space if each game also takes up more than 50 GB.
Thankfully, the Epic Games game client (which houses Fortnite ) allows games to be installed in any location and hard drive. Stupidly enough, however, there is no built-in ability to automatically move a game from one place to another. Instead, you need to uninstall the game you want to move. Then install it again in the new location. Which also means that the game needs to be downloaded again.
This is not a huge problem if you have a fast internet connection. However, if you do not want to download 66 GB again, you can actually move Fortnite (or any game in the Epic Games Launcher ) to another hard drive – even though there is no actual function for it. Here’s how to proceed!
Move Fortnite to another hard drive without having to reinstall the game
Before we begin, it should be mentioned again that if you have a really fast Internet connection, it can actually be faster to just download Fortnite to the new hard drive, instead of copying the game. However, if you do not want to copy the game but just download and install it to another hard drive, you can follow this guide regardless. But then you only need to complete steps 4 to 9. If you would rather copy the game, just read on!
- The first thing we need to do is copy all the game files for Fortnitefrom our old hard drive to the new one. In this case, we will use an external USB3 hard drive, but it is just as well to copy the game to an internal hard drive if you so wish. However, copying the game to and playing from a USB2 hard drive is not recommended as charging times can be very lengthy. By default, Fortnite is installed under My Computer> Local Disk (C :)> Program Files> Epic Games . We navigate to the folder, right-click on Fortnite and select Copy .
- We then navigate to the hard drive we want to copy Fortnite to. We will install the game on our external hard drive named External (D 🙂 in the Games folder . Here we create a new folder we call fortnite_backup . We then right-click in the fortnite_backup folder and select Paste to copy all game files to our external hard drive.
The actual copying of the game files takes different lengths of time depending on which hard drive you copy them to and whether it is an internal or external hard drive.
- Once the Fortnitefolder is copied to our external hard drive, the next step is to open the Epic Games Launcher and uninstall Fortnite . We do this by clicking on the three dots next to the game and selecting Uninstall .
- To confirm the uninstallation, we need to click Uninstall againin the message that appears.
- After this, it’s time to tell Epic Games Launcherthat we want to install the game again, but in a different location. We do this by first, in short, clicking Install on the now gray Fortnite game.
- In the dialog box that appears, click Browseto change the installation folder.
- Because we want to install the game in the Gamesfolder on our external hard drive, we navigate to this folder and click Select folder to change the installation path. NOTE – Be careful not to select the fortnite_backup folder .
- We then double-check that the installation folder is correct under Folderand then click Install .
- Theinstallation of Fortnitestarts now and the Epic Games Launcher starts, just as it should, download the game. Here, however, we come to the little trick that makes it possible to use the already copied game files to avoid downloading all 66 GB again. As soon as the download reaches 2%, we do the following.
- We click on the three dotsnext to the game title and select Cancel Install to stop downloading the game. Then we close Epic Games Launcher .
- We then navigate to our external hard drive ( D 🙂followed by Games and our backup of the Fortnite game ( fortnite_backup ). Here we right-click on the Fortnite folder and select Cut .
- We then go one step back (to the Gamesfolder ), right-click and select Paste .
- Since there is already a folder named Fortnite(containing the files the installer managed to download to 2%) in our game folder, the question arises what we want to do with the files that have the same name as the ones we paste. Here we select Replace the files in the case .
- When all the files have been copied, we restart Epic Games Launcherand click Resume to continue the installation of Fortnite .
- What happens now is that the installer notices that there are already a whole bunch of files in the selected installation folder. This causes the text to change from Installingto Verifiying after a while . Which means that the installer checks that all the game files are in place. As with the copying of the game, this process also takes a while to complete.
- Once the control of the game files is complete, simply click Launchto start the game from the new hard drive.
