I know that you can install the game, content and expansions to any drive you want. If your concern is to maintain the installation in case of computer crash here is a suggestion.
Attach your external drive. Prefeably Esata, Firewire, or USB 3.0 since they all have better speed and make game play possible without extreme lag. Once the drive is installed install a fresh or virgin installation of Sims 3 to your computer. However, during installation do not let the install wizard install the content folders to your main HDD. Instead tell it to browse for another location and pick your installed drive. You'll need to set up folders ahead of time, I did this on my backup drive one for each Game, expansion and Content CD so that I could keep them separated. I created a master folder that I called "EA Games" Each of the expansions and content CDs I stored inside this folder and in a sub folder which matched the title of the installation disk.
The install wizard will install the majority of its data to whatever folder or sub folder you assign it to. Once that is done, go to "Users>"Your computer name">my documents. You will see a folder called "Electronic Arts. This folder contains most of the active game components. You will need to compy the whole folder to your external drive. This is your backup. It allows you to keep a total copy of Sims 3 without having to reinstall in the case of a system crash. I like to put it on the other drive inside a folder marked "Sims (combined with date written in this format 12-2-2012, example)
If your computer ever crashes and you need to replace sims, you can install the first game only then copy this boder back into the primary location on C drive. If your external's letter remains unchanged you should be able to play the game from where you left off.
This may not be exactly what you're looking for. But it is the best I can offer from personal experience. I hope it does help you to some extent.
traveller004
Hi Everyone,
So I'm going through a similar situation as described above.
My go is- I own an ASUS laptop and I'm pretty sure my memory is all full. So, I've now gone and bought a USB hardrive of 2 TBs, and with the sims 4 coming out tomorrow, I am eager to play it. So! What should I do? Should I uninstall all ym sims 3 expansions and game and put it on my USB Hardrive? or downloard my sims 4 straight onto my USB? becauase I've read that putting the sims game onto the USB hardrive will game the game slower?
Now I don't know if anyone will actually help me or see this, but if anyone has relevant feedback,it would help me hopefully 🙂
an external usb storage device is going to be slower (much slower) then a storage device that is directly connected. You need free space on the system drive for the operating system to work correctly. I recommend 20% of the capacity of the system drive be free. The best way to get more storage is to purchase a larger storage device (hard drive) and image the old drive to the new drive then remove the old drive and install the larger drive. Imaging only works with like devices (sata to sata, pata to pata, etc). There are shareware programs that will do this. I use Norton Ghost only because I bought it a long time ago and it works. With Seagate now shipping 8tb drives there is no excuse to run out of storage. Running programs from an external usb drive can be troublesome. Usb drives are good for mass storage like for music, movies, pictures, etc but not to execute from. The trouble with usb drives is that the drive letter can get reassigned and that usually stops the program from working correctly. Like the startup icon - that is a fancy short cut to the program executable and if the drive is re assigned the program will not be found (just one example). There are other ways (nas box?) but none are as good as using a bigger system drive.
