Question about Gameplay and Saves

@candiecoatediv  There's no reason your hardware should be limiting performance; this is much more likely to be either an issue with the game itself or with your custom content.  The issue with photos in particular seems to happen even on the highest-end hardware; it's just that some aspect of how the function is programmed doesn't work efficiently.

I don't know what custom content you use, but you could test the game out in a clean user data folder with no cc present at all and see whether it makes a difference.  That should let you know whether your cc is contributing to the problem.  While having a lot of cc does increase the initial load time, well-made cc shouldn't drag down performance while Sims 4 is up and running, at least not with your graphics card.  If you find that it does, you may have bad cc, and you'll need to test the files to see what's causing the issue.  And of course, any time you want to download new cc, test it in a clean game folder before adding it to your existing saves.

Another thing you can do to help your computer run the game better is limit your in-game framerates.  If you play in fullscreen mode, enabling vertical sync will help.  There's a setting for it in the game's graphics options.  Or you can go through the built-in Nvidia Control Panel, which may work better and gives more flexibility.  Right-click on your desktop and select Nvidia Control Panel, then Manage 3D Settings, then Program Settings.  Choose TS4_x64.exe (green box), or click Add to the right and find TS4_x64, then select it.  Enable vertical sync (red box): you can try On, Adaptive, or Adaptive (half refresh rate).  Try enabling Triple Buffering (immediately above v-sync) as well, although it's not always necessary.

Something that might make your life easier is having separate user data folders for each save, rather than moving the saves themselves back and forth.  That way, you can add just the cc you want to use in a particular save to that save's folder and keep it out of the other folders if you want.  The entire Sims 4 folder can be moved in and out of Documents\Electronic Arts whenever you want, and since you have an external drive, it should be easy to swap the folders when changing saves.

It's not going to help to run the game off the external drive though.  Unless your internal drive is critically low on space (somewhere below 10 GB free is probably the tipping point, although it varies), it won't help performance, and the connection to the external is going to be orders of magnitude slower than the one to your internal drive.  So while you could technically do it, you'll only make loading times slower.

@puzzlezaddict Thank you for your rapid response. I she tested in a vanilla game and have noticed the choppiness when taking photos. But I do want to mention it’s funny you brought up GeForce. This is not something I have ever used nor activated an account with. After posting here I jumped on google to get info about my laptop and the best way to utilize the gaming aspect. I’ve had this laptop since September, in fact I think you are one of the users that helped me when I was shopping around (thank you!). It wasn’t until about a month ago that I discovered the Armory Crate and that I can access my game there with specific profile settings. I’ve been using this until someone on YouTube recommend that I use the GeForce Experience to make sure my game is using optimal settings. So I went in to my GeForce and activated it along with updating my driver (which I hadn’t done prior to today). I also went into the my NVIDIA control panel and checked that my sims 4 game is using the NVIDIA GPU settings when playing. I’m just getting into checking to see if I notice anything wonky, hopefully not.
I may need clarification when you mention user data folders. Right now for example I have a sims 4 game named the sims 4.100baby in my EA folder in my documents. When I want to play my legacy folder, I take the .100baby folder out and put in my .grace-legacy. Of course after each swap when in game renaming to The Sims 4 so my game will recognize it. I initially had several saves in one folder, then saw a video recommending different save names but she had them all in her EA my documents folder. But she said it was a way to be able to use different CC and Mods for different saves. I liked the idea but was worried about how much space it would take so I took all of those saves and put them on the EHD so now I just love them back and forth when I want to play a particular save. Is this the same as you were recommending?

@puzzlezaddict Thank you so much for the clarification and help! I didn’t have to download GeForce as much as activate an account to update my graphics driver. But so far I can already tell my game looks a lot smoother (if that makes sense). Again, as always thank you for your time and patience in helping figure things out. I wish I knew more about computers and such lol.