How Can I Change Game Saves to a Different Drive

I have made a post in the MAC area by mistake because it was the only post I found in the EA forum and I don't know how to move it!

I am not attaching a link because the moderator may want to delete my responses

Most of the response posts I am seeing for many of my games is you can't. And other responses are explaining how to install your games on a different drive.

My C: Drive is an SSD.  Newer games are installed here because they need higher processor speeds, better graphic cards, more memory and therefore a faster drive.

But, games with lower requirements are now installed on my backup HDD drive.

I want my newest 4K level games saving to the HDD.    

Project Statement:

There are now 3 main reasons for instruction on how to move game saves and/or games to different folders and/or drive than there has been needed in the past:

1.  A single hard drive and big game file saves going to a Documents Folder, which is used for document saves by default (Really not enough drive space because of game storage usage requirements and no provided alternate drive drive space to a different folder name save solution). Documents space becomes the target. In fact I have found that some of my games save to different folders on the C: 
   • Solution uninstall games, buy a bigger drive and figure out how to redo everything! or Add an additional drive and figure out how to move the games to the new drive. 
     • So, the user understands the need for  more drive space and buys another drive and the game are still saved to the C:\ Documents, not the new drive!
     • The game developers were on time buy making it possible to install the games to other drives but not the saves so, eventually you buy another drive and you keep having space issues on the C:\Drive.
2. But as we evolve our game library and technology the SSD hard drives come into play and I don't have a drive size problem.
   • but, I really don't need a lot of old game and new games doing games saves to the SDD drive making a lot of data storage rewrites.
   • I want that work done on the HDD data drive.
   • As I build this machine I need to route the games saves to an HDD for all games that need specifically go to the system drive with the game that is doing the saving. 
   • Which games I reinstall,  buy and play will be based on these kinds of criteria.
3. OneDrive has taken over Documents and is backing up it's contents to the Cloud for free with a limited budget of 5GB for saved files.
   • I think I have found a work around and am testing results right now for this issue with Win 11.
   •   I am trying to overcome problem "2." because I have installed a SSD in Windows 11 and don't want game saves on that cloud drive space.
     • SDDs are a lot faster, but they have a finite numberer of writes before they become a read only data store system devices.
       • The SSD is usually the C: Drive and the common developer practice is to do game saves to the C: Drive! 
       • You don't really want to use game saves\caches to write and then overwrite areas of the drive over and over again.
       • The recommendation for sure is do not defrag a SSD.
       • I will update this post if I do discover a fix with the work in progress.
       • Problem #3 is working and in trial in the section below, I will be working on cleaning it all up and making the workings as clean as possible.
         • I may want to use OneDrive services with in the Free limits but that is at this time a non-game related item for now.
       • I will be making Problem# 2 my main focus now

Edited incorrectly posted background information to the MAC Forum:

What EA Games apparently doesn't realize is that Windows has created a OneDrive that has taken over the Documents folder.  This folder no longer belongs to the user but is backed up to the OneDrive cloud drive and and causes hassrament of the the user because game saves and caches take up a lot of space in a hurry when you have a 5GB free budget and the warnings seem to kick in at a pretty low usage level.

By example I have stopped playing some Origin, Steam, BattleNet, etc games because I need to go into the OneDrive Documents folders for these games all the time and decide which files I don't want to keep at the risk of deleting or moving the wrong files when I want to play these games.

Right now I have a warning in OneDrive - Personal hidden icon with a red circle and a white X in the center meaning I do not have enough free space and the app is suggesting I upgrade to pay for additional storage.at 1.6GB of 5GB Free.

With windows, game developers should  not still use OneDrive Folders as a default game save location because of  the reasons listed above!

How could EA Games not be aware of these issues?

I am at the point now that I will not buy a game if the game saves must be in a OneDrive Folder until I can overcome this problem!  My online research shows we (users, customers) have been complaining about this to each other for years and in other ways to game distributor's support groups. If moderators pay attention to the requests to not wanting game saves in Documents (the system drive) any more..

What EA APPS are doing is like sending all their game save to Google Drive so they would automatically exceed their cloud storage budget!

I have see more support requests for this game save issue ever since OneDrive took over Documents than before when Documents was just a user Document Storage Directory being consumed by game saves and running out of space.

I installed Battlefield 2042 on an SDD drive to get better game play but I was deleting Cache saves all the time in Documents all the time because I was made aware  by OneDrive warings.  I stop playing because I don't want to accelerate wearing out write capabilities prematurely on the SSD with unnecessary writes.  In addition, many of us want the game saves on a secondary HDD Drive that acts as an internal backup and data storage drive (including game saves).

EA games has/is probably losing sales unless some kind of solution is provided, which I have not discovered to date.

Sincerely,

epstanleyiii

Update:

I am testing to stop my game saves in Win 11 Documents from being backed up in the OneDrive cloud with an apparently new Win 11 feature.

• If you are interested in trying this yourselves then back up your OneDrive Documents before you turn off the following switch in windows 11!

Settings > OneDrive Backup Files > Back up folders on this PC:

Documents OFF

Pictures      OFF

Desktop      OFF

Music         OFF

Videos        OFF

Had to turn some of the button off more than once, they would come back on on their own!

I really glad I have the ability to back up stuff before I start testing:

• Note: "abcd" is first for letters of the users' first name
• The next morning C:\Users\abcd\OneDrive\Documents (Mostly Games Saves) was empty!
  • Could have been a work error by me.
• Test Conclusion, C:\Users\abcd\OneDrive\Documents "OneDrive cloud drive backup storage issue, Problem Solved!"
  • If C:\Users\abcd\OneDrive\Documents was empty, there is nothing to back up to the cloud!
• New Folders Found! C:\user\abcd\Documents was Empty! (OPPs, Looks like I did something wrong!)
  
  • Nice windows gave me back my "Special Folders" (Desk, Documents and Pictures folders) from OneDrive?
    • But I have to fill C:\Users\Documents again from backup!
• Recovering Document Files:
  • I started up a game and C:\Users\abcd\Documents was update! (Yeah!)
  • Closed game
  • Deleted files created recovered folder contents from testing .
  • Put previous stuff in My New Documents folder from backup!
• What are these new configuration implications? 
  • C:\Users\abcd\OneDrive\*.* ( all previous OneDrive folders and files) still exist.
    • Including folders and files I added manually are still presented in Explorer when the folder is opened)
    • But, now I have the same named Special Folders in C:\Users\abcd (My Folders).
    • Clicking on the Documents Folder to the left in Explorer just shows and empty folder.  This is a folder, not a junction or shortcut to my folder!
  • Very Confusing, more work to be done, but making a system that works usefully is out of sope form the problem statements above. I have stopped OneDrive automated backup of  game saves to the cloud from the OneDrive Documents Folder!

This effort has been a first step in resolving the issues stated above if possible and will post my results if I have more success in the absence of community support answer affiliates with EA games. This is important to me because I have many EA games and a lack of answer for my issues!

If anyone reads this and makes any progress I am certainly interested and I will follow this post to look for or share new learnings!

Sincerely

EPSTANLEYIII