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Fae-Sama-22580's avatar
Fae-Sama-22580
3 years ago
Solved

How to move The Sims 4 to an internal hard drive without a symbolic link?

Hello! I've been playing The Sims 4 since I was able to get a PC all the way back in 2017 and have loved the game since, which means along the way I've managed to come across loads and loads of CC an...
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  • puzzlezaddict's avatar
    puzzlezaddict
    3 years ago

    @Fae-Sama-22580  The fundamental issue here is that Sims 4 will always look for the user folder in Documents > Electronic Arts.  As you likely know, when no Sims 4 folder exists there, the game will make a new one.  Because of this programming, there are only two options: to move the location of Documents, because Sims 4 will look wherever the Documents directory is located; or to use a symbolic link the point the game to a user folder stored elsewhere.

    The guides for moving the user folder to an external drive all describe creating a symbolic link because moving Documents to an external drive is a bad idea.  If that drive is unplugged, Windows won't be able to find the Documents directory, and that could have significant consequences depending on what the computer is doing at the time.  For an internal drive, however, this is not a problem.

    The point is, you can move all of Documents to your secondary drive, no symlink necessary, and Sims 4 should read the user folder just like it does now.  This function is supported in Windows; you're not doing anything that is going to mess up your computer, at least as long as you follow the instructions.  I will say that if your secondary drive is much slower than your C drive, you might notice significantly longer loading times, but that's the trade-off for having a larger drive that doesn't cost a fortune.

    This is a good guide for moving Documents to another drive:

    https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/74952-move-location-documents-folder-windows-10-a.html

    If you get stuck on any particular step, just let me know which one and what about it is difficult or confusing.

puzzlezaddict's avatar
puzzlezaddict
Hero+
3 years ago

@Fae-Sama-22580  The fundamental issue here is that Sims 4 will always look for the user folder in Documents > Electronic Arts.  As you likely know, when no Sims 4 folder exists there, the game will make a new one.  Because of this programming, there are only two options: to move the location of Documents, because Sims 4 will look wherever the Documents directory is located; or to use a symbolic link the point the game to a user folder stored elsewhere.

The guides for moving the user folder to an external drive all describe creating a symbolic link because moving Documents to an external drive is a bad idea.  If that drive is unplugged, Windows won't be able to find the Documents directory, and that could have significant consequences depending on what the computer is doing at the time.  For an internal drive, however, this is not a problem.

The point is, you can move all of Documents to your secondary drive, no symlink necessary, and Sims 4 should read the user folder just like it does now.  This function is supported in Windows; you're not doing anything that is going to mess up your computer, at least as long as you follow the instructions.  I will say that if your secondary drive is much slower than your C drive, you might notice significantly longer loading times, but that's the trade-off for having a larger drive that doesn't cost a fortune.

This is a good guide for moving Documents to another drive:

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/74952-move-location-documents-folder-windows-10-a.html

If you get stuck on any particular step, just let me know which one and what about it is difficult or confusing.

  • Fae-Sama-22580's avatar
    Fae-Sama-22580
    3 years ago

    Thank you so much for this response (and apologies for getting to it a bit late)! I figured that it would be better to go ahead and ask for people who know better than I do when it comes to things like this just because I fear losing so much of the things that I've gathered over the years with this game but this helps so much! Thank you again for the help and just the kindness in general <3 I'll be sure to try this as soon as possible!

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