Forum Discussion

LeoMontgomery's avatar
LeoMontgomery
Rising Rookie
2 years ago
Solved

Can't download Sims 4 on eternal hard drive, mac

Hi! I am unable to install The Sims 4 on my external hard drive. After one of the patches following the From Rent expansion I started getting visual glitches, specifically red and white stripes and ...
mac
  • Bluebellflora's avatar
    Bluebellflora
    2 years ago

    @LeoMontgomery 

    Really helpful, thanks 🙂 Is it this one? https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/products/external-hard-drives/backup-plus/ if so I found the read/write speeds and more technical info here and they aren't great. The drive is a 5400rpm HDD which is slow by today's standards. Slow speed means data is more likely to corrupt when using it for installed software that is constantly reading and writing and Sims 4 has to load a lot of data from the drive to run. The visual glitches you're getting are a common indicator of a corrupted game installation.

    You really need an SSD with much faster speeds. I wrote a guide a little while ago on the best type of drive to use for the game.

LeoMontgomery's avatar
LeoMontgomery
Rising Rookie
2 years ago

Thank you so much Bluebell Flora! And apologies for this late reply. You indeed found the correct external drive, that looks a lot like a modern version of what I have! 

If I'm understanding you correctly, it's time for me to upgrade my hard drive to one that has an SSD. I did at one point install only the base game on my internal mac drive, and that did not prompt the error. All in all, it's the external drive that's being a menace in all this. 

I'm going to carefully read the links you provided. Thank you so much for your help and information, I would have been completely lost on my own and not dared to invest in something pricey in case it wouldn't likely solve the issue. It will take a while until I can buy a new drive, but now I have something to aim for.

Once I've bought the drive and tested it out I will update this thread and mark it as solved if that is the outcome. It might take 2 months though (worst case). 

Thank you again!

Bluebellflora's avatar
Bluebellflora
Hero+
2 years ago
@LeoMontgomery

Great 🙂 when you find one you think is ok post a link here before you buy.
  • LeoMontgomery's avatar
    LeoMontgomery
    Rising Rookie
    11 months ago

    This is much much later than I ever intended, but I've finally been able to purchase an SSD external hard drive. It has a USB-C connection. And my game is working again! I can now play with all my packs installed on the external hard drive and I haven't had any visual glitches during the two "sessions" I've played so far.

    Thank you so so much Bluebell Flora for helping out, I can't thank you enough 🙂 

    Best regards, Leo

    • Bluebellflora's avatar
      Bluebellflora
      Hero+
      11 months ago
      @LeoMontgomery

      Ha ha brilliant! And thanks for coming back, always nice to know something helped 🙂

About The Sims 4 Technical Issues - Mac

Do you have technical issues with The Sims 4 on Mac? Get help from the community here!8,126 PostsLatest Activity: 17 minutes ago

Community Highlights