Hi my fellow simmers! I have a question about external hdd!

slytherin_petra​  It is safe to move the Sims 3 user folder (the one in Documents > Electronic Arts) to an external drive, or to move the Electronic Arts folder.  It is NOT safe to move the entire Documents directory to an external because Windows could react badly if the external were ever disconnected, either physically or in software, and any program called for access to Documents.

Moving the folder is a simple matter of cut and paste, available when you right-click.  Getting the game to actually read the folder on the external requires a symbolic link.  I can help with that if you let me know which folder you'd like to move and what the file path to the new location would be.  For example, you might move the Electronic Arts folder to a folder called Sims Data on your D drive, in which case this would be the file path:

D:\Sims Data\Electronic Arts

You can of course also install the game on the external drive if you want.  You'd need to uninstall it where it is now and reinstall, but you wouldn't need a symbolic link.  Just tell the EA App to install the game where you want when you click Download.  It's best to create a folder on the external so you're not installing directly on the drive, e.g. D:\Games\The Sims 3 rather than D:\The Sims 3.

Having said all that, Sims 3 would load much more slowly when on an external drive.  Gameplay would be the same, but any loading screen would be longer, as would starting the game and entering CAS, and saving for that matter.  An external HDD's read and write speeds are likely much slower than what your internal drive is capable of, and with the amount of data being processed, that makes an obvious difference.

So if you have anything else you could move to the external instead, that would be the better choice.  Even Sims 4 is less affected than Sims 3 unless you have a massive cc collection.

puzzlezaddict​  OMG!! Thank you so much!! I don’t have a lot of cc, just all of the store worlds and some store items maybe a little bit of cc that I liked and downloaded! And the smooth patches and NRAAS (not the story progression, I find it really annoying and makes my save files so big that my game crashes on my internal, bc of space). Maybe I’m gonna get some more packs or Into the future later, and some cc as well, but that’s it:)
I have an USB port 3.0 maybe that help to load faster?? 

I’m definitely create a new folder like you said on my external drive! I really want to play my fav Sims game again for many many generations and moving different houses/worlds etc.! And ofc without crashes:) Last year my game crashed when I moved my family to a big mansion after they grew out the apartment (I had nraas Story Progression, never again) and it crashed bc I didn’t had enough space (??) I think. My internal drive was in red and had like 10 gb space. Even I made backup saves, and cleared out the old ones, the game crashed. 

I would like to move from my documents folder the Mods and Downloads and all the Sims 3!! I mean the Documents folder has the cc’s and mods and everything basically, right? So it needs to be on the external HDD with the whole game. I’m just guessing at this point:) 

Thank you so much again!! :)

slytherin_petra​  The fact that your drive uses USB 3.0 is good, or at least better than if it were 2.0, but that's just the theoretical maximum data transfer speed of the connection.  It doesn't say anything about the speed of the drive itself, only that it won't be limited by a slow connection.

Using NRaas StoryProgression doesn't make a save much larger and wouldn't trigger an out-of-storage-type crash.  Running SP is more demanding than not, for sure, but that's only going to cause some lag and perhaps RAM spikes, not really much save bloat unless you're also playing rotationally.  Still, if you don't want to use it, that's simple enough.

Having less than 10 GB free storage could cause a crash, depending on when you measured it.  I could get into why if you're curious, but in the end, it's best to have more like 25 GB free at all times if you can manage it.  Less is okay if you're monitoring things closely.

For the symlink itself, this is a good guide, written for Sims 4 but the concept is the same:

https://crinrict.com/blog/2020/02/moving-windows-documents-folder-to-external-drive-via-symbolic-link.html

If you get an error when using the command, please post a screenshot of the Command Prompt window showing the command and the error.  And feel free to ask questions about the process, but it's easier if you try it first, or at least look over the guide, and point to a specific step for which you'd like more details.

puzzlezaddict​ Thank you so much!!! I would try this today!