📓[GUIDE] [PC] Choosing where Sims 4 data is stored
This guide covers options for changing the location of the game's program files and the user data. This guide is only for Windows.
Overview
Sims 4 takes up a lot of space, sometimes more than a computer or drive can comfortably fit. This guide covers options for moving game data elsewhere.
jump to: Benefits and drawbacks
jump to: Installing to a custom location
jump to: Moving the Documents folder
jump to: Moving the user folder via symbolic link
This guide is for Windows. Mac users, please see this article.
Installing and playing this game results in two separate Sims 4 folders: one that contains the game's program files and one that contains user data. Program files are what the EA App installs, in the location of your choice, or C:\Program Files\EA Games by default. User data consists of saves, Tray files, mods, etc., and the game always expects this folder to be in Documents\Electronic Arts. If the folder isn't there, the game will create a new one with no content rather than looking for the data elsewhere on your computer.
These folders can be stored almost anywhere you want, but they should never be combined. Doing so comes with a variety of risks, up to and including permanent loss of your saves. If the Sims 4 folders will be on the same drive, create separate parent folders to contain them, for example D:\Games\The Sims 4 and D:\Sims Data\The Sims 4.
Benefits and drawbacks
The main benefit to moving your game data is freeing up space on the drive(s) that currently contain it. For the overall health of your computer, your system drive (C) should always have at least 25-30 GB free, more if you're frequently working with large files. Other drives need at least some free space too; how much depends on general usage and the type of drive, with mechanical drives (HDDs) especially slowing down significantly when close to full.
The game's program files will occupy just under 70 GB with all current packs installed, at the time of this writing; the size of the user folder depends on what you place in it, of course. A large custom content collection can be hundreds of gigabytes and might not fit on a smaller system drive at all.
Some people organize the data on their computers in such a way that it's more convenient to use custom locations for games and associated files.
The main drawback is that the speed of a secondary drive, especially an external one, is unlikely to match the speed of your system drive, so loading times may be noticeably slower. A solid state drive (SSD) is much faster than an HDD, but the connection between an external drive and your computer could be slower than the drive itself. (This is not a problem for a secondary internal drive.) For best results, look for online reviews that have measured the actual read/write speeds of the drive rather than simply referencing the manufacturer's listed specs.
Other drawbacks are mostly user error: forgetting the details of a setup, deleting a symbolic link, losing an external drive, that kind of thing. OneDrive can also cause problems; this guide covers your options for managing OneDrive settings and how to implement them.
Installing to a custom location
EA App
jump to: Steam
The EA App will install all games to C:\Program Files\EA Games by default, but during the install process, you can select a different folder under Install Location.
This location can be almost anywhere, but it should not be on the root level of the drive. For example, if you're installing to a new drive D, create a folder, e.g. D:\Games\The Sims 4, and install Sims 4 into that; don't install directly to D:\The Sims 4.
If you've already installed the game and want to move its location, it would be best to uninstall through the EA App (Sims 4 > Manage > Uninstall), then reinstall to the new location.
However, if your download speeds are slow enough that reinstalling would be a burden, you can try a workaround first. Close the EA App and make sure the EABackgroundService is NOT running in the Task Manager. Right-click the Sims 4 folder that contains the program files and select Cut. Right-click empty space inside the folder where you want the game to go and select Paste. Wait for your computer to finish transferring the data, which will take some time.
When the transfer is done, open the EA App, which will see Sims 4 as uninstalled. Tell the App to download to the new location, where you pasted the program files, and it may simply verify the files and finish the install process. Or it may redownload part or all of the data—I had mixed results when testing this.
If the process doesn't work correctly, you'll need to properly uninstall and reinstall the game. It's probably unnecessary to do a clean uninstall, but if you've made a mess of things (or think you might have) and want to remove all game data, please see this guide to clean-uninstalling:
Steam
Steam downloads games to your Steam library, which is located here by default:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common
To change the location of this library within Steam, select Steam > Settings > Storage, click the arrow to the right of your drive name, and click the + Add Drive button:
Under Add a new Steam library folder, select "Let me choose another location," then click Add and choose the folder you'd like to use. The new folder must be empty and not on the same drive as any other Steam library.
You can also change the location of an already-installed game. Create a new Steam library, as described above. In the same Storage tab, find Sims 4, check the box to its right, and click Move. Steam will do the rest.
Moving the Documents folder
If you would like to store your Sims 4 user data (saves, mods, etc.) on a secondary internal drive, the simplest way is to move the location of the Documents directory for your Windows account. Your computer will have several Documents folders, but Windows designates only one per account as the directory, and this is the location Sims 4 uses as well.
DO NOT move the Documents folder to an external drive. Doing so can have serious consequences for your computer, particularly if the secondary drive is ever disconnected, either physically or in software.
This guide covers how to move the Documents directory and common errors:
Move or Restore Default Location of Documents Folder in Windows 11
If you still can't move Documents, the problem may be OneDrive, and you may need to prevent OneDrive from syncing Documents at all. Please see this article for help:
Moving the user folder via symbolic link
These instructions cover moving the Sims 4 folder in Documents > Electronic Arts, which contains saves, mods, and other user files. This does not apply to, and is not necessary for, the program files, as in, what the EA App or Steam installs. This part of the guide is based on this article, written by holger1405 , and adapted with permission.
jump to: Creating the symlink
jump to: Common errors
If you're moving the Sims 4 user folder to an external drive, or you're using an internal drive but don't want to move the entire Documents folder, you can create a symbolic link to tell the game where to look for your data.
You could instead create a symbolic link for the Electronic Arts folder, for example if you want to move data for Sims 3 and 4 at the same time. These instructions are written with moving the Sims 4 folder in mind, but the principle is the same; just change the file paths accordingly. It is also possible in theory to move a subfolder inside Sims 4, e.g. Mods, but in practice, this can lead to files not loading or showing as corrupted, so it's generally best to move at least the entire Sims 4 folder.
You can use almost any location you want, but you'll avoid certain complications by placing this folder inside a parent folder, not directly on the drive, for example D:\Sims Data\The Sims 4 rather than D:\The Sims 4. The folder should not be anywhere inside Program Files, and no other data should be inside this Sims 4 folder.
Creating the symlink
First, find the location of the current folder. Even if you think you know where it is, please check anyway—this location can change for various reasons and without notice. Open the game, click Options > Game Options > Screen Capture, and look at the Location Path:
This is the file path you'll use in the symlink command later. If it's inside the OneDrive folder, and you have no use for OneDrive, it would be best to address this first. Please see this guide. Otherwise, copy the file path the game shows you, open a new text file (Notepad is fine to use), and paste the text. Delete everything after "The Sims 4" as it won't be used.
Close the game, open a File Explorer window, and navigate to this Sims 4 folder. Right-click this folder and select Cut. Navigate to the location where you want this data, right-click the empty space, and select Paste. Wait for the process to complete, which may take a while if your Sims 4 folder is large and/or the drive you're using is slow.
Right-click the Sims 4 folder you moved and select Properties > General. Highlight the Location, and copy and paste it into your text file. Now you'll create the command you're going to use. Create a new line in the text file and paste this text:
MKLINK /J "[location 1]" "[location 2]"
Replace [location 1] with the file path you copied from within the game. Replace [location 2] with the Location of the Sims 4 folder after you moved it. Don't change anything else. The command will look something like this:
MKLINK /J "C:\Users\username\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4" "D:\Sims Data\The Sims 4"
Note that the file paths in the command need to end with the same folder name: the name of the folder that's the subject of the symlink. If you're playing in Spanish, French, German, or Dutch, your folder name will be localized (e.g. Los Sims 4), so be sure to account for that in both parts of the command.
Search in Windows for Command Prompt and select the Run as Adminstrator option. Highlight the command you created above, starting with MKLINK. Paste it (ctrl-V) into the Command Prompt window, and enter. You should see "Junction created for..." in the window:
and also a symbolic link (a folder icon with a blue arrow on it) in the original location of the Sims 4 folder you moved.
Test the game and make sure your data loads correctly. If it does, you're done.
You can undo the symlink by dragging it to the recycle bin. Then move your Sims 4 folder back to the original location so your data loads again.
Common errors
User data doesn't load: Double-check the file paths in your Command Prompt command to confirm they point to the correct locations. Make sure all the data is present in the location where you moved it. It's possible the files were not all moved correctly—you may have cut off the process too soon or moved the wrong folder. Please see this guide for further reading about missing user data.
"The system cannot find the file path specified": This means the folder where the symlink is supposed to be created doesn't exist, so the Electronic Arts folder in the example above. Load Sims 4 and double-check the location the game is reading. Delete the new Sims 4 folder that will have spawned in this location before attempting to create the symlink again.
"The syntax of the command is incorrect": You've probably added or removed or replaced a bit of the command, for example one of the quotation marks. Create the command from scratch again, copying and pasting each component rather than writing it out.
"Cannot create a file when that file already exists": This means that in the location where you want the symlink, which is where the folder was before you moved it, a file or folder with the same name already exists. (That would be "The Sims 4" in the above example.) This can happen if you choose to Copy the folder rather than Cut; or it can happen if the folder is inside OneDrive, and your OneDrive contains a synced copy of the Sims 4 folder that it downloads to your machine before you can create the symlink.
Remove this folder, and if necessary, pause OneDrive syncing. Right-click the cloud icon in the lower-right corner of the screen, or sometimes hidden in the Tray (^ icon), to see the option:
Then run the command again.
If none of this helps, please create your own thread in the Sims 4 PC tech forum. Post the command you used and the error, if any, you received.
