I need to download games to secondary drive

Sounds like a permissions issue. Normally permissions are inherited so it'd be a messy fix.

If the drive is fairly empty I'd suggest moving any non-game data to another drive, formatting it via Disk Management (in Computer Management), then reinstalling games.

Warning: formatting causes data loss and you do this at your own risk.

@KatSolo

Thanks for your response @alphawolf35. I don't suppose there is any way to test this before reformatting? I can play all my other origin (and steam) games which i have also installed to the secondary drive, it's just the sims that has split itself like this (again, it plays fine, but i want the neighbourhoods/saves to be stored on the secondary drive, the primary drive lacks the capacity).

I won't lie, it's kind of potluck. Technically speaking though, Windows drives are formatted with top level permissions that are inherited all the way through subfolders. It sounds like you can read and execute but not write, this would suggest that permissions aren't what they should be.

The only other theory I can think of would be that the drive is failing, in which case I'd want to ensure anything important on that drive is backed up. If this is the case then it'd be more apparent after a format as you'd be encountering issues installing other games.

There's a slight possibility that the drive is fine and the game is just being problematic: maybe corruption or you need to run as administrator/reinstall. But these are potential resolutions you can spend time on and get nowhere with, but of course you're more than welcome to try on the off chance. I just don't think they're the resolutions in the case -- I've been proven wrong before 😕mileytongue:

@KatSolo