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dprssdblkhottie's avatar
dprssdblkhottie
Rising Newcomer
23 hours ago

Factory Reset Laptop: Content on External Hard Drive isn't Recognized

Hi everyone! 

I recently had to do a factory reset on my laptop which means I'm almost starting from scratch. 

Today I plugged in my external drive that still has all my sims 4 content, then downloaded the EA app, and subsequently my Sims 4 game and add-ons. I fired up the game, turned on CC/Mods, saved and restarted. Unfortunately, nothing from my external hard drive is recognized in game and a new EA folder was generated in the Documents folder. So I'm stuck on how I can restore all of my content, saves, tray files, etc that are on my external, back into my game. I uninstalled the game, and changed the game location in EA to my external hard drive but it was taking forever so I started to doubt I was doing it correctly and cancelled the download.

I'm not super tech savvy but I was able to setup the game on my external drive and play this way a few months ago but I've never had to restore the symbolic link or location of the files after a factory reset.

TIA for all the help and answers. 

 

custom content (cc)
ea app
guides
missing content
updates

1 Reply

  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    Hero+
    2 hours ago

    dprssdblkhottie​  Your saves and other user content need to be in a folder called "The Sims 4" rather than in the SIMSIESS folder they're inside now.  However, do NOT combine them with the Sims 4 folder in your first screenshot—that folder contains the game's program files, and having the two sets of files in the same location can lead to a variety of problems.  So create a different folder on your external drive and place your Sims 4 user folder inside there.

    For more information about storing data externally, please see this article:

    [PC] Choosing where Sims 4 data is stored | EA Forums - 12598500

    Feel free to ask further questions.

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