Forum Discussion

5 years ago

Solved

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 10.1...

mac

Bluebellflora
5 years ago
@twinbri

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

Bluebellflora

Hero+

5 years ago

@twinbri

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

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.
- madame64
  3 years ago
  OMG ! After nothing has ever worked for me, I can now see my hard drive ^^ What should I do next ?
  I know this message comes a bit late, but thank you for your help 🙂
  Edit: Now my games are being saved on / Volumes/(Name of hard drive). Can I now back up my saves, tray, mods etc... and uninstall/install my game without difficulty ?
  - Bluebellflora
    Hero+
    3 years ago
    @madame64
    
    Can you explain further, I'm not understanding your setup and what you want to achieve.
    
    Have you crested the symlink to store your Electronic Arts of Sims 4 folder on an external drive?
    
    Is your game installed on the external drive?
    
    These are two very different things 🙂