Sims 3 EPs on External Hard Drive?

[PorcelainVal]

I'm planning on buying LN, soon...but after doing a routine check-up on my computer, I realized I probably don't have the space for it.  I have an external drive with 1Tb of space which has been a good candidate for said project.

Question 1: If I decide to place LN on F:/My Book (instead of C:/Program Files/...), will I have to uninstall and relocate Sims 3, WA and AMB there, too?  Is it possible to have LN on the F drive, by itself?

Question 2: How will this affect my CCs?  I have all my mods in My Documents (AMB method).  To be specific, I want to know how it might affect AwsomeMod.  Sims 3 is f***ing useless without it.

  Any help would be appreciated, as I'm not what one would call "computer savvy".

[Tever]

For question 2, it shouldn't affect your CC at all. I've done it myself, and it used the folder in Documents as normal.

I'm not exactly sure about your first question. I would probably reinstall everything to the external harddrive just to limit things getting saved to weird places for weird reasons, but that's probably just paranoia on my part.

[bloodredtoe]

I remember having no problem with some sims 2 expansions being on a different drive than the other, so not the issue probably. I'd be more worried about access time since as far as I know communication with external drive is slower than internal SATA. You could back-up your saves and test it (i.e. not touch what you already have there, install NL on the external drive), if it's unplayable then remove LN for now and invest in a larger internal drive maybe (unless you're using a laptop, then it's probably not an option).

[PorcelainVal]

I might have to just be the test subject for this.  Thankfully, I'm already backed up for the LN patch...I wante to help test AM.  I've searched all over for an answer to my questions but all I get is explainations for how to install base game on external drives.  Unfortunately I only have a lap top so getting internal upgrades aren't really an option.  I'll report my findings for anyone else once I download LN.

[Seqkat]

I might have to just be the test subject for this.  Thankfully, I'm already backed up for the LN patch...I wante to help test AM.  I've searched all over for an answer to my questions but all I get is explainations for how to install base game on external drives.  Unfortunately I only have a lap top so getting internal upgrades aren't really an option.  I'll report my findings for anyone else once I download LN.

I have had some experience with this and Sims 2, although I don't know if that counts as useful experience. Unfortunately with Sims 2 it didn't work unless the hard-drive was never turned off and never disconnected from the computer (and it seemed to work best if the computer was never turned off either!) Otherwise it kept effectively losing the expansion packs - claiming that they weren't installed so you were using the wrong disk, or getting otherwise confused and refusing to run the game. However, as I say, I don't know if this is comparable evidence.

[Sarafina]

If you are worried about installing the game on there, you could look at your my documents folder and think about moving that.  Mine is huge so I moved it to my external hd a year ago and it gave me so much space to install stuff.  All my cc is in there and I see no slowdown vs. having both on the same drive.

[Claeric]

If you are worried about installing the game on there, you could look at your my documents folder and think about moving that.  Mine is huge so I moved it to my external hd a year ago and it gave me so much space to install stuff.  All my cc is in there and I see no slowdown vs. having both on the same drive.

How did you change the location of the MyDocuments folder and keep it connected to the game? I would like to move it somewhere other than MyDocuments but as far as I know, just moving it makes the game make a new one.

[Patrick]

NTFS Junctions.

[bloodredtoe]

How did you change the location of the MyDocuments folder and keep it connected to the game? I would like to move it somewhere other than MyDocuments but as far as I know, just moving it makes the game make a new one.

Probably moved My Documents folder. R-click/Properties/Location. You probably should've figured that out yourself...

[Claeric]

I meant "The game folder, located in mydocuments" not "the mydocuments folder itself". I only used "mydocuments' to clarify I meant the non-install folder.

[Patrick]

For crying out loud...

In Vista/7 on an elevated CMD:

C:\Users\Patrick>mklink /J X:\SimsFiles "C:\Users\Patrick\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\"

or so.

[Sarafina]

Or you could just google it like everyone else in their right mind would do.  You know better than to just sit on your ass and expect me to spell it out.  For someone who makes them self seem like they are a computer literate person, you sure can't do a lot of simple shit sometimes.

[Claeric]

For crying out loud...

In Vista/7 on an elevated CMD:

C:\Users\Patrick>mklink /J X:\SimsFiles "C:\Users\Patrick\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3\"

or so.

I wasn't asking again, I was clarifying what I meant.

[wizard_merlin]

Unfortunately I only have a lap top so getting internal upgrades aren't really an option. 

Unless your laptop already has a 750GB or 1TB Hard drive, why is getting an internal upgrade not an option?  750Gb are more readily available while 1TB tend to cost too much at the moment to make it really viable.

If you really want to use an external HDD, why not uninstall and re-install everything to the External HDD and see what happens, that would free up even more space on the internal drive.

[PorcelainVal]

Unfortunately I only have a lap top so getting internal upgrades aren't really an option. 

Unless your laptop already has a 750GB or 1TB Hard drive, why is getting an internal upgrade not an option?  750Gb are more readily available while 1TB tend to cost too much at the moment to make it really viable.

If you really want to use an external HDD, why not uninstall and re-install everything to the External HDD and see what happens, that would free up even more space on the internal drive.

TBH I wasn't really in the mood to reinstall everything so I just moved 90% of my music and photos onto the external drive and that left free space for LN.  I find that laptop upgrades are bit overpriced.  It's not really in my budget at the moment.  Plus, I already got the external one so I wanted to know if it was useful before spending anymore cash.  You're right though...putting EVERYTHING on the external drive would probably be the way to go.

Thanks for the help.  Sorry I couldn't be of more use to someone looking for similar answers.

[claudiasharon]

My external hard drives specifically say not to run programs off of it (in the manual), so make sure you check that out first.

[Patrick]

My external hard drives specifically say not to run programs off of it (in the manual), so make sure you check that out first.

That's what you get for reading the manual: being treaded like a dumbass. Unless you unplug it while using it, it's perfectly fine to run anything off it.