Playing Sims 4 on External HD Mac
BluebellFlora, Thank you for being so helpful to many people. I followed your website instructions very carefully for the symlink to my external hard drive that I formatted APFS beforehand. I gave...
Forum Discussion
- No, you need to change the game library installation location in Origin > Application Settings > Installs & Saves. Mine is installed on an external. After changing the location I would download a fresh copy of the game and packs to avoid any corruption from moving apps around:
- After you have successfully done step 1, yes.
- Changing the location in step 1 applies to the base game and Sims 4 Packs folder. No symlink is needed.
- Yes. The symlink is used to move your Sims 4 user data folder containing your saves, tray etc. files to the external. Installing the game on an external doesn't require a symlink, that's why you need to do step 1.
- Origin will do this once you have completed step 1.
Hope that helps! 🙂
hmm... I played it just great yesterday so I know it DID work. Now it is telling me Sims 4 is already running. I looked at the original instructions and the instructions of other people who had this problem too but I can't seem to find a solution.
I put both of these in terminal originally:
mv ~/Documents/Electronic\ Arts /Volumes/SimsHD/
ln -s /Volumes/SimsHD/Electronic\ Arts ~/Documents/
Origin AND Sims 4 have permissions to access removable volumes and folders.
Origin still has installs and saves going to /volumes/SimsHD
In my SimsHD drive I also right clicked Get Info and made sure that everything is read and write for everyone.
I don't get what is going on!
- @thelordsgrace
It sounds and looks like everything is where it should be. I don't know of any other reason it could be popping up with that error. This person posted why it was happening for them https://bluebellflora.com/saving-your-sims-4-folder-to-an-external-drive/#comment-67624 maybe that helps although you are moving the EA folder like I did.
Can you screenshot the permissions in System Preferences > Files & Folders for Origin and the game?Yeah. I also do not understand. I do not have any game user data folders and I never did that command in terminal. I'm so confused. I also have a Macbook air from 2014, in macOSCatalina Version 10.15.3.
- @thelordsgrace
Yep, that all looks good. Have you ejected the drive, restarted your Mac, plugged it back in and tried again?
10.15.7 is the latest version of Catalina. Upgrade in System Preferences and see if that helps. I'm not sure it will but not sure what else to suggest ☹️
