How do I move installed games to an external hard drive via the EA App (PC).

In the EA app in the upper left hand corner, click to bring up the settings menu, then find the downloads section. Click and open the downloads section in the EA app, there you will find  the download install location, the default is the C: drive, change your install location from C: drive to D: drive to download to the an external hard drive.  My husband recently suggested that I try this to run the sims from the EA app, but I have run into issues even with the external hard drive. 

I got it to work one time but now that I have to update it, it doesn’t want to download to my external hard drive

 yeah... wait almost two whole days for the download to be uploaded and done. not remotely a joke . 

3 years later and still having this lovely issue:) has anyone figured it out yet??

You have to trick EA App into verifying the moved game install without needing to re-download it:

1) Completely exit EA App from menu or system tray.
(Not from the [X] in the window's upper right corner; that only minimizes to tray.)

2) Move the game install folder to the new location, e.g.
C:\Program Files\EA Games\STAR WARS Battlefront II
to
D:\Games\EA Games\STAR WARS Battlefront II

3) Start EA App. It won't see the game install anymore.

4) Go to install the game. When prompted for the location, point it to the folder where you just moved the game files.  It will automatically append the game folder, so just point it to "D:\Games\EA Games" in the above example.

5) Instead of re-downloading the game, EA App will check the existing files in the target location

Install UI will read "Preparing xxxGB / xxxGB" (instead of "Downloading").

Since all games files are present and their checksums match the current version of each file, once the files are verified it will finalize the configuration and report "Installation complete".

Hi all,

I'm going to close this thread to stop it from being necro'd.

If you're experiencing the same or a related problem or want to start a new discussion, please create a new topic or respond to a more current thread.

Thank you.