The Sims and External Hard Drives

I installed Sims 4 on an external drive as an test and it works for me but I left all files that is mandatory to be left on an local drive. However it may not work for all systems. You must have USB 3.0 and above, Thunderbolt 1.0 and above and you CPU and GPU as well as memory must be up to par. Data access speed is very essential for it to work and if your system main components do not complement each other it may not work too well. I tested Sims 4 on an I7 4790K 16 Gb 960 4 GB with USB 3.0. However it was an test and I had plenty of space on my locals I saw no need to keep Sims 4 on an external drive.

"NorthDakotaGamer;c-16764651" wrote:
My gaming PC has three hard drives, one is solely for games. Origin is loaded to the one labeled gaming drive as are all the games we own. It works, as long as I have both the icons for the games and origin on the desktop. It will create a second electric arts folder when you load the game to your documents part of the desktop, but the actual bulk of game information will be on the hard drive you put it on. At least that is how I was informed by my husband who is more into IT.

Do you play with custom content? Do you have to move it back and forth between the drives each time you play? One of the reasons I want to put it on the external hard drive is I like to play TS3 with a lot of CC and such for photo taking purposes but when it was all on my laptop, it took 2 hours to get from launch game to the save actually loading. Same kinda goes for TS4 but merging my CC is a lot easier so it's not as big of a problem other than some lag.

"NorthDakotaGamer;c-16764788" wrote:
The cc is actually put in the sims 4 desktop folder which is in the EA folder. I play with 2 gigs or less cc. My gaming drive is always connected, so the bulk of the game is downloaded there.

I'll have to look more into the external hard drive aspect of it. I found a guide for how to install the games onto the external hard drive but they don't mention anything about custom content so I'll have to keep looking. Thanks so much for your help!

"Goldmoldar;c-16764860" wrote:
I installed Sims 4 on an external drive as an test and it works for me but I left all files that is mandatory to be left on an local drive. However it may not work for all systems. You must have USB 3.0 and above, Thunderbolt 1.0 and above and you CPU and GPU as well as memory must be up to par. Data access speed is very essential for it to work and if your system main components do not complement each other it may not work too well. I tested Sims 4 on an I7 4790K 16 Ram 960 4 GB with USB 3.0. However it was an test and I had plenty of space on my locals I saw no need to keep Sims 4 on an external drive.

Yeah, I still have to do some research on the whole thing. I talked to tech support at EA and they said I should be good to do it but there's still the matter of the amount of lag I experience from either game because of my RAM. I want to be able to have both games (expansions, stuff packs, CC, etc.) installed at the same time so I can play whichever I'm in the mood for without having to choose but my 6GB of RAM just isn't cutting it for either game anymore. I mean, I'm basically the mayor of Lag City.

So now I have another dilemma of whether to buy a chip for my kind of older Asus laptop (it's at least 5 years old and has had to be brought back to life at least twice) or do I save up for a more "gamer" laptop that will take me probably more than a year to save up for. *sigh*

Thanks so much for the info though! :D

"xosummerloverxo;c-16764889" wrote:

"Goldmoldar;c-16764860" wrote:
I installed Sims 4 on an external drive as an test and it works for me but I left all files that is mandatory to be left on an local drive. However it may not work for all systems. You must have USB 3.0 and above, Thunderbolt 1.0 and above and you CPU and GPU as well as memory must be up to par. Data access speed is very essential for it to work and if your system main components do not complement each other it may not work too well. I tested Sims 4 on an I7 4790K 16 Ram 960 4 GB with USB 3.0. However it was an test and I had plenty of space on my locals I saw no need to keep Sims 4 on an external drive.

Yeah, I still have to do some research on the whole thing. I talked to tech support at EA and they said I should be good to do it but there's still the matter of the amount of lag I experience from either game because of my RAM. I want to be able to have both games (expansions, stuff packs, CC, etc.) installed at the same time so I can play whichever I'm in the mood for without having to choose but my 6GB of RAM just isn't cutting it for either game anymore. I mean, I'm basically the mayor of Lag City.

So now I have another dilemma of whether to buy a chip for my kind of older Asus laptop (it's at least 5 years old and has had to be brought back to life at least twice) or do I save up for a more "gamer" laptop that will take me probably more than a year to save up for. *sigh*

Thanks so much for the info though! :D

Sadly, with an laptop there are a few upgrades you can do and sadly it cannot be the CPU or GPU. Yeah the only thing you can do is save your money for an better and newer laptop.