Re: transfer sims 4 to hard drive, tips?

thank you for the clarification! just to make sure, i have to keep the origin application on my pc for the sims to function right?

regardless, i'll be sure to follow through with your answer when i get my hard drive

@redstarmoo  You can usually install Origin on an external drive as well, although some people find it doesn't work properly.  If you want to move Origin, be sure to put it within its own folder on the external, so if you need to uninstall it, you won't also accidentally uninstall anything else.  And be sure to uninstall Origin "the hard way" before reinstalling it elsewhere.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/manually-uninstalling-origin/

But since Origin is a relatively small app (around 350 MB), it might be easier to leave it where it is.

thank you!!!

Okay...sounds simple enough... but I am so worried I will mess this up! 😳💔

I have run out of room on my main hard drive & have plenty of room on my external hard drive.

I just don't want to lose all my hard work, like I did when my old computer's hard drive failed.

Designing lots, especially residential homes is my fave passtime in sims 4...

then I enjoy sharing them when I know they're polished.

Already planning to leave the Origin launcher on my main hard drive.

I just want to move sims 4 with my saves most especially.

So, am I reading your instructions correctly... ? that I can uninstall the game;

then, reinstall but choose the folder (created for TS4) on my external hard drive to install the game to?

Because that sounds the simplest.🙌

I've checked & TS4 is taking 15.4GB on my hard drive.

(To be honest, DAI is taking the most at 36GB🤨🤐).

Thanks so much for your willingness to share your experiences with this.

@cosmoblivion  Yes, you can install Sims 4 on the external hard drive just as you described.  You may also be able to simply instruct Origin to move the game files to the external:  right-click on the Sims 4 icon, select Move Game, and pick the folder you want to use.  But this doesn't always work, so be prepared to fully uninstall.

What you can't really do is redirect the active game folder, with saves, builds, and other content, to your external drive.  That folder needs to always be in Documents\Electronic Arts, or the game won't read it.  While it's possible to move the entire Documents folder to an external drive, that's not a good idea unless you plan on never unplugging that drive.

You can however back up the Sims 4 folder in Documents\Electronic Arts to your external drive, however many times you want.  Or you can copy the Tray folder, which contains your saved builds and households.  There's no harm in having lots of backups, and you can move any content back to your internal hard drive when you'd like to use it again.

Thanks so much @puzzlezaddict ! ❤️ I appreciate your specific answer to my question. You are very kind. 😃

hello! i'm having an issue and was wondering if you could help. so i plan to move my sims 4 files onto an external hard drive, to have more room for custom content. i did research and was pretty sure i knew what to do, change the Origin Installation path. everything was going fine at first when i uninstalled Sims 4 and changed the path. i was pretty sure it would work, but when i reinstalled sims, it redownloaded in the documents file, under Electronic arts. i tried to put Electronic arts in the external hard drive, nut it wont work, any advice?

ightve found the solution, found the move game, thing, will update if that doesnt work either.

@yesimjill  You can move the game's program files to a second drive through Origin's Move Game feature, although loading times will be faster if the game is on a solid state drive.  But the Sims 4 user data folder will still be in Documents\Electronic Arts, and if you move that folder, the game won't be able to find it and will create a new one with no content.

The easiest way to move the user data folder is to move all of Documents to your secondary drive.  This is simple and supported by Windows:

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

Hi, I was wondering if you could help me. I have literally no storage left on my laptop (The sims 4 takes up 54GB) so plan to move it to my external hard drive. Could you possibly tell me more on where the move thing is? I tried moving the sims 4 to my external hard drive but it says Origin cannot download this on a  root directory (dunno what that means). Do I uninstall the sims and Origin, or just the sims? How do I get it to redownload in my external Hard drive?

Thanks in advance!

@Lucycatshaw  When you install an application onto any hard drive, you usually need to install it into a folder.  You can't install it directly on the drive, which is referred to as the "root directory."  That goes for both internal and external drives.  So for example, you can't install Sims 4 to the directory D:\ (as in, just on the D drive with no folder), but you can install it into D:\Origin Games, or D:\Games on My External, or whatever you want.

Within Origin, you can right-click on the icon of a game you've installed and select Move, then choose the destination, and Origin will copy over the files and adjust the other related data accordingly.  But again, you need to create a folder into which the game will go.

If the Move function doesn't work, then yes, you'll need to download it again, this time directly to the external.

Hello! I came across this thread and wondered if you could expand anymore on how I would be able to move all of my documents/saves to an external hard drive? I tried to do this and it doesn’t work. I have extremely low storage on my laptop, so whilst having my games saved locally shouldn’t normally be an issue it is for me. 

@sashacampbell199  It's not a good idea to move Documents in its entirety to your external hard drive unless you absolutely never plan to disconnect that drive, which kind of defeats the purpose of having one in the first place.  But you can use a symbolic link to move your Sims 4 user data folder (the one in Documents\Electronic Arts) to the external drive if you want.  Here's a useful guide:

https://crinrict.com/blog/2020/02/moving-windows-documents-folder-to-external-drive-via-symbolic-link.html

If you have questions about the process, feel free to ask.  But it should work fine as long as you follow the instructions.  Be sure to make a backup copy of the user data folder beforehand, or at least your essential files.

Wait what did you do to have it stop redownloading to documents cause I've been trying to figure that out for two days 

@BruisingEmu1 

If Origin created content in the Sims 4 folder despite you having a symbolic link to an external drive it will be because said drive were not connected when you started the game or it was assigned another drive letter. The latter may happen when you add or remove other external storage.

Hey there, do you also have any idea how to do it on a Mac?

@cherryyjung  If you mean storing the Sims 4 user folder externally on a Mac, please see the first post of this thread:

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-Mac/-Creating-a-symlink-in-macOS-to-store-the-Sims-4-folder-on-an/td-p/12329439

If you need more help with that process, please post in that thread.

If you're looking to store the game's installed files on an external drive, that's as simple as directing Origin to install on the external.

Since this thread is somewhat old, I'll lock it here.