Can't Move My Game or Change Game Location to an External Hard Drive with Origin

Hello all,

As EA Customer Service is not at all helpful, I have turned to this community to hopefully get some tech support. I currently play the Sims 4 on my MacBook Air running macOS Catalina 10.15.6.

I no longer have enough space on my computer and want to move my game (with all the expansion packs, game packs, etc.) to my external hard drive which I know will be slower, but I need the space. The issues I have been facing are as follows:

1. When I go to My Game Library on Origin and right-click on the Sims 4 game tile, I do not get the option to "Move Game"

2. When I go to Origin's Preferences > Installs & Saves > Change folder for Game Library Location, my external hard drive cannot be found as a location

I have tried, when changing the Game Library location on Origin, manually imputing /Volumes/TheNameOfMyExternalHardDrive as the location, but it says the drive is not mounted - but it is mounted.

If someone could please help me with this, it would be greatly appreciated. You'd think EA would help me figure this out since I'm looking to get more space to buy more packs...

Thanks!

mac

Bluebellflora
5 years ago
@twinbri

Make sure Origin has Full Disk Access in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy.

13 Replies

Bluebellflora
Hero+
5 years ago
@twinbri

Make sure Origin has Full Disk Access in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy.
twinbri
5 years ago
Wow! Amazing! After allowing Full Disk Access to Origin, I manually imputed /Volumes/NameOfMyExternalHardDrive as the location and it worked. So much time spent with EA Help for such an easy fix. Thank you so much.
lxnnanden
5 years ago
@Bluebellflora i am having the same problem, but there is nothing in my security & privacy that says "full disk access"
Bluebellflora
Hero+
5 years ago
@lxnnanden

Which OS are you running? It's only relevant to Catalina 10.15.
lxnnanden
5 years ago
@Bluebellflora i fixed it, but thank you
twinbri
5 years ago
Hey there,
Back again. For some reason, my external hard drive wasn't mounting on my Mac so I had to erase it. I am now trying to redownload The Sims 4 onto the external hard drive again via Origin, and I am getting this error message when I try to force the location to /Volumes/ExternalHardDrive: "Origin is unable to install games in your chosen folder because the destination drive is not mounted. Please choose another folder."
The hard drive icon shows up on my desktop and when I check Disk Utilities I can unmount the hard drive, so it' seems to be mounted. Origin also has full disk access.
I have tried redownloading Origin and restarting the computer. Any thoughts? Please let me know. Your help is greatly appreciated.
Bluebellflora
Hero+
5 years ago
@twinbri

Try this:

In Origin > Installs & Saves > Game Library Location click on Change Folder

In the left side click on Computer then double click on the '/' that appears next to a picture of your hard drive in the right side. You should see four folders in the right now - Applications, Library, System, Users.

In the field at the bottom, where it says Directory, type in /Volumes/[the name of your external] then hit Enter. For example, my external is called Backup and shows Backup when plugged in in Finder, so the file path is /Volumes/Backup.

The window will disappear and reappear again but you may not see your external. That's ok, quit Origin then reopen it. You should get a Gatekeeper message popping up asking for Origin to have permission to access files on a removable volume. Just click Ok.

Now repeat steps 1 to 3 and you should see the contents of your external in the window.
twinbri
5 years ago
@Bluebellflora
Unfortunately, it did not work. After following the steps and writing /Volumes/ExternalHardDriveName in the directory, I still get the error message saying the external hard drive is not mounted. This is after I wrote /Volumes/ExternalHardDriveName in the directory, the window reappeared, I quit Origin, and then I did not get a gatekeeper message. ☹️
Thanks for your input!
Bluebellflora
Hero+
5 years ago
@twinbri

Hmm, not sure what the issue is. You could try reformatting the drive again? Name it differently though.
twinbri
5 years ago
@Bluebellflora That worked, thanks!
If anyone is looking for some sort of answer:
On my Mac, I went into Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility selected my hard drive under External and clicked erase at the top (will erase your hard drive completely). Then I picked MS-DOS (FAT32) as the format and picked a new name for the hard drive. After, I went into Origin > Preferences > Installs & Saves > Change folder and manually wrote /Volumes/ExternalHardDriveName as the Directory.