Re: Can I move the Bioware folder from C:Documents to my D Drive?

Hello,

 Can you Help me? I have tried to change my saving location from C: (SSD) to A: (HDD), however every time I save in the game, a new BioWare Folder is still saved at C: Documents. The new directoiry address, which I am trying to move to is  A:\Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect

I had to install the game to find the configuration files for ME1 but it seams like it's just like in Dragon Age. Since my previous answer was marked as a success I'll presume that BioWare uses this as their only configuration file. Anyhow, on to the steps you have to take:

1. Find the ME1 installation folder (where the game is installed, not your saves).
2. Make a backup of the file (set a nice new file ending that you'll remember what it is, .bak for example)  <path_to_mass_effect_1>/data/masseffectconfig.xml (it might only look like it's named masseffectconfig depending on your operative system setting)
3. Open the file <path_to_mass_effect_1>/data/masseffectconfig.xml with the text editor of your choice
4. Change the following line:
   <string name="USERDATA_DIR">${CSIDL_PERSONAL}\BioWare\Mass Effect</string>
   to:
   <string name="USERDATA_DIR">A:\Documents\BioWare\Mass Effect</string>
   presuming that's the folder where you want your saves to be located.
   
5. Move all your ME1 saves from your document folder to the new location.
6. Start the game and you'll hopefully be able to enjoy the new save location.

Just give me a shout if it doesn't work and I'll look into if I can find some more configurations when I get the time.

I try that's solutions but, it can't, i try open the dao after edit DAOriginsConfig.xml, and my savesdata not loaded, like a new installation the DAO, please tell me what to do, sorry my english so bad!

whether its DAOriginsLauncher.xml also edited?

What did you replace the 

<string name="USERDATA_DIR">${CSIDL_PERSONAL}\BioWare\Dragon Age</string>

with?

like that right? and I've changed all such clue

I personally just moved the entire Documents folder to my hard drive. I did the same with Downloads, Music, etc. because they really don't need to be on an SSD.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/how-move-windows-7-personal-folders-my-documents-another-drive.htm

I can't find anything else in the config file that specifies the location to your document folder so if it doesn't work with changing the string in the xml-file and having it pointing to "D:\Saves\BioWare\Dragon Age" when:

1. There actually exists such a folder (consider that the computer is dumb, it must be exactly as it is written with no random spaces after and/or wrong large characters).
2. The "D:\Saves\BioWare\Dragon Age" folder actually has the same structure as the original "My Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age" folder (for example contains the folders "Characters" and "AddIns".
3. The modified xml-file is located in the original path and has the name DAOriginsConfig.xml (note that the .xml is the file extension and should not normally be shown in windows file browser).

If those are correct (to the character) and it doesn't work for you, I'm afraid I can't come up with anything else in that config file. Of course, there might be something else that I've missed in another config file which I haven't looked at. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to look for it at the moment. However, the answer that Fred gave above works just as fine since it's changing the systems personal directory (CSIDL_PERSONAL and CSIDL_MYDOCUMENTS) which the original xml-file is using. However, that will also change the pointers for every other well written program (that is, hopefully, the majority that uses those system references).

I have tried the way proposed by fred, and it worked, thank you very much for his assistance🙂

I've attempted your method on 2 separate computers...  It's like DAO isn't even reading the config file.

Create the exact file path, used that path to replace in the config file (every instance of the original file path), it ain't working.

I'm trying to just get this method to work by using D:\Blah as the file.  To test it I removed the saved character from D:\Blah but it still had them from the BioWare Folder in MyDocuments.

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong... The only thing I can think of is that I'm using an Origin App cloud install. (Confirmed, Out right deleted the DAOriginConfig.xml file nothing bad happened and it wasn't recreated)

Edit: And for the record, I do not want to move my MyDocuments Folder...

Edit 2: Never mind, I discovered a 3rd method that does the same thing.  I created a junction between the 2 folders so that the computer thinks it is 2 different locations at once, But it's stored in the second Location.

In Administrator Command Prompt: mklink /j "C:\Users\"YourUserName"\Documents\Bioware" "D:\Games"

This command creates a Junction between those 2 locations.  The only thing is that the First file Cannot exist, In Other words you have to Backup the BioWare Folder and then delete it from Documents (BTW the reason I use Documents instead of My Documents is because of Windows 10).

Hi,

I'm really sad to here that it doesn't seem to be working for people. Furthermore, I can't come up with any other configuration setting to change. However, there's always the solution that works outside Dragon Age Origins (on a operative system level). The idea is to create a symbolic link between the current folder path to where you want the stuff to be stored. This will make it look like there is a folder in My Documents that is called Bioware while in reality it only links to another folder stored somewhere else (kind of like the famous shortcuts). In windows you do it by doing the following:

1. Move your Bioware folder to its new location.
2. Open a Command line prompt (press windows button + r on the keyboard, the enter cmd in the run prompt and press enter).
3. Make sure that there is no folder called "C:\users\<your account name>\Documents\Bioware" before you do the next step (since it, potentially, could overwrite it. Not used to terminal in Windows but it definitely has the power to do so).
4. Type in: mklink /J "C:\users\<your account name>\Documents\Bioware" "<new location of the folder, e.g: D:\SaveGames\Bioware>" (the "/J" tells the linker that it's going to be a dictionary junction, the first string is the location that you want to make a link from and the last string is the target of the link).
5. Done!

In the case that you only want to move a subpart of the Bioware folder you'll just have to change the first string (and maybe you would want to change the second string to point to a more nicely named folder). Furthermore, on mac (and linux for that matter) the command would be: ln -s source_file target_file.

Now I just made a small test to see that it's working by moving everything and checking so that I can find the saves and it seems to be working (even when installing the game from Origin).

Finally, shame on programmers who has configuration files but don't use them. That isn't handy when it comes to maintaining code or for users to change the configuration. I could go on and rant about it but will just leave it with that.

Anyway, try the symbolic link solution and come back to me to see if it works.

There's a much easier way to do this, and it worked for me(On a Win7 OS). Move your "My Documents" folder, and all subfolders, to the secondary drive. Then, click start menu, click your username, right click the My Documents icon, and choose properties. Go to the Location tab, click the "Move" button, and select the folder's location on your secondary drive. For example, mine is "E:\\My Documents". From then on, DA:O will automatically follow the file path to the save games being on the other drive.

Edit: Meant to say that there was a better way to make your bioware games point to the right save game folders after moving the bioware folders to another drive.