How to move Sims 3 folder to different drive from C drive?

There is a way to do that using what we call junction points/symbolic links. But if your C drive is that tight on space, honestly it's much more straightforward (and easier to manage) if you just use Windows to shift your entire Documents library to another drive. That is, assuming you have another internal drive to use; an external for this purpose is probably not going to work out well.

The game doesn't really care where your TS3 user game folder is physically, as long as it can find it through the system defined Documents directory.

Here are some illustrated instructions on how to do that. Forgive the "dummies" website name, but they do offer some very good tutorials over there like this one. It's for Win 10, but the instructions for Win 8.1 shouldn't really be very different.


Edit: Okay, just in case here are the Win 8.1 specific illustrated instructions.

"MagicEmerald;c-18026723" wrote:
Uh thanks, but I'm not exactly a computer whizz and this sounds way confusing to me? Am I suppossed to create a library on my E/drive and then send the sims 3 there, or what should I do?

Use a right-click or any other method that comes to mind to get to the Properties dialog box for your already existing Documents library as shown in the Win 8.1 illustrations. You should see that it is located in C:\Users\(your user name)\Documents. Click Move and change that to E :\Users\(your user name)\Documents. Or just about anything else that indicates where on E you wish to see it. You may still end up with an "extra" Documents folder left behind on C that you can then get rid of, after verifying that the real one with all of its contents has indeed moved over. And a new folder may still spawn on C but it won't or shouldn't contain very much by comparison as it won't be the in-use one.

And yes, the Origin trick is for the installation of the program files, which you already have taken care of. Not the user game folder.

Are you on a user account with administrator rights? There has to be (at least) one such account at all times. And yes, you can create the target user folder first but if it's not there Windows should just create one for you.

Otherwise, this really shouldn't be all that complicated. I must be missing something here.

Glad to have been of help (eventually), but 22 GB doesn't sound like much free space if you are about to negotiate a Win 10 upgrade. I realize you only had less than 128 GB to begin with, but a C drive that small is really meant for the operating system itself and maybe security software (anti-virus/malware), Everything else really belongs elsewhere, if feasible. Can you not shift some additional programs or files to another drive?

You might want to check for and remove unnecessary Restore Points and run Disk Cleanup to see if either one manages to kick up more space.

If you take a completely formatted (empty) 128 GB C drive and install Windows on it (any version, let's say 8.1 in your case), it's not going to take up the entire drive. I have no way of knowing what else you may have installed on it or what is taking up so much space without poking around at it or running routines like Disk Cleanup.

And again, you may want to look up or get some help with checking out how many Restore Points you have. Those can take up a lot of space, or dozens of GB anyway. Personally I run with System Restore totally shut off because professionally I've found that malware can hide in the Restore Points. Different users' experiences with them will vary.

I think you stand to lose your data that way, or rather your system may lose track of it. Certainly appdata\local\temp can always be cleaned out, but it tends to collect more debris again after doing so.

Yes, that method of redirection should be perfectly safe. And no worries about the annoying music, I have this wonderful bottle of 1,000 ibuprofen tablets sitting near my desk that I purchased before my local pharmacy/drug store got all stoopid about not being able to restock shelves due to supply chain issues (I think they actually are trying to reduce theft but they'll go out of business if they keep this up). :)

Uh thanks, but I'm not exactly a computer whizz and this sounds way confusing to me? Am I suppossed to create a library on my E/drive and then send the sims 3 there, or what should I do?

If you have the game through Origin just log into Origin, go to your library and right-click TS3 and click "Move". Then you are free to move the entire game to a new drive.

"Astro;c-18026727" wrote:
If you have the game through Origin just log into Origin, go to your library and right-click TS3 and click "Move". Then you are free to move the entire game to a new drive.

The problem is, I have it on d/drive already, but the documents and all of that are still stuck in c/drive