Changing save file locations?

[Chubbygummibear]

All my saves are going to a My Games folder in my C: drive, but that drive doesn't have much storage on it, so I've been trying to move the save destination to my E: drive but I've had no success. I tried copying the folder over and deleting it, but Steam just redownloaded all of my saves from the cloud and remade the entire folder. It might also be worth mentioning that all my steam games are installed to my E: drive already Any help is appreciated

[XeRo]

I just spent some time trying to figure this out myself. The solution I found is to right click on the My Documents folder and go to the location tab. From there, pick a new location to move it to. It should move all contents of My Documents there. I just tested it and it seemed to work. Hope this works for you.

[Chubbygummibear]

Thanks a lot man, that did the trick

[WintersGlade]

I did this initially, and thought ok great. Wrong, I got startup errors in my C:\ and had to format it only to find that even after I had already done whats described above, All my game saves were gone because it never moved the save directory. Month of progress...*poof*
Are there any settings that make this work?
My Computer: Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit

[mx2k]

Why would one move the whole My Documents folder, just to change the FO4 savegame location

1. Copy or move the savegames from My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to the location desired, eg. G:\FO4Saves
2. Delete or rename the original Saves folder at My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to something else, eg. Saves.backup
3. Open cmd with admin rights and navigate to My Documents/Fallout4
4. Create a symlink to the new location with mklink

Basic Syntax:
mklink /D [linkname] [linktarget]

To follow my example:
mklink /D Saves G:\FO4Saves

This will create a directory symlink named "Saves" in the My Documents/Fallout4/ folder, which points to the new savegame location. Windows treats the directory symlink as a folder, and so does Fallout. Works completely flawless for me since 200+ hrs of gameplay.

[Waiter]

It's really beyond stupid that there is no way to decide for yourself where the saves should be located.

I have an SSD for Windows and games to speed up (I thought) loading/saving times. I have moved my Document folder together with the Pictures, Movies and Music folders, to a HDD to save the space on the SDD. I don't see why on earth the game save files should be stored under My Documents in the first place.

The result is now that I have almost half a minute of black loading screen every time the game autosaves, as the HDD has gone into sleep mode during the game and has to be woken up before the game can save or load.

The trick above with a symlink won't work for me as the symlink still has to be in the My Documents folder, which means that the HDD stll has to be woken up before the game is saved or loaded.

The only options left for me is either to change the energy settings so that the HDD doesn't go into sleep mode, or I am forced by the game to move the My Documents folder back to the SSD where I don't want it.

[Smash Palace]

Only core programs & OS are on my SSD, everything else including steam go to my 4TB WD BlackEdition HDD. Dont know why so many ppl put games & other crap into where your OS is if you have another HDD.

[DecrepitDragon]

Moving your folder to a different drive is the best solution. I have indeed moved my entire docs folder - too much stuff in it for my SSD to handle.

One question though - using symlnk allows you to move individual save folders etc, but didn't I read somewhere that it can cause errors and data loss? My memory isn't great so I'm willing to be corrected. :)

[netreaper]

Originally posted by mx2k:

Why would one move the whole My Documents folder, just to change the FO4 savegame location

1. Copy or move the savegames from My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to the location desired, eg. G:\FO4Saves
2. Delete or rename the original Saves folder at My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to something else, eg. Saves.backup
3. Open cmd with admin rights and navigate to My Documents/Fallout4
4. Create a symlink to the new location with mklink

Basic Syntax:
mklink /D [linkname] [linktarget]

To follow my example:
mklink /D Saves G:\FO4Saves

This will create a directory symlink named "Saves" in the My Documents/Fallout4/ folder, which points to the new savegame location. Windows treats the directory symlink as a folder, and so does Fallout. Works completely flawless for me since 200+ hrs of gameplay.

Best answer.
I didn't even know that Windows has this feature and not only Linux.
In fact it's part of Windows since Windows Vista.

[ckonestroh]

Originally posted by netreaper:

Originally posted by mx2k:

Why would one move the whole My Documents folder, just to change the FO4 savegame location

1. Copy or move the savegames from My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to the location desired, eg. G:\FO4Saves
2. Delete or rename the original Saves folder at My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to something else, eg. Saves.backup
3. Open cmd with admin rights and navigate to My Documents/Fallout4
4. Create a symlink to the new location with mklink

Basic Syntax:
mklink /D [linkname] [linktarget]

To follow my example:
mklink /D Saves G:\FO4Saves

This will create a directory symlink named "Saves" in the My Documents/Fallout4/ folder, which points to the new savegame location. Windows treats the directory symlink as a folder, and so does Fallout. Works completely flawless for me since 200+ hrs of gameplay.

Best answer.
I didn't even know that Windows has this feature and not only Linux.
In fact it's part of Windows since Windows Vista.

Need to do C+ programming. Basic understanding for programmers.

[s.turner3030]

Does the SLocalSavePath= work in the fallout 4 ini settings? If so could you just add that to point to where the new saves are?

[apalamen]

Thanks guys, I loaded up the SAVES folder and the TEXTURES/ACTOR/CHARACTER and BASEHUMANFEMALE folders into RAMDISK. And no more stutter even in large scale battles downtown. I was running RESOURCE MONITOR and noticing a huge amount of disk reads from the TEXTURE/ACTOR folder each time the game stuttered. It wasn't the graphics. I spent so much time trying everyone's tweaks that it ended up with me with a game with 512 byte textures for everything and all shadows and HD textures turned off that it made me feel like I was playing a 1990s version of QUAKE...

What really sucked is that even with 1990s version of an FPS, I was still stuttering everywhere I was walking/running to. Especially if there was any creatures nearby that popped up.

I'd advise running RESOURCE MONITOR for all those who still have stutter problems as I did and thought it was godrays, shadows, texture resolutions, etc and those didn't solve the stutter. Of course I'm not saying a i3 with 2gb of ram is going to hit 50-60fps. I am only saying if you have a good or very good system and still stutter.. give it a try.

Thanks for everyone's help setting up a RAMDISK for me. I ended up using PRIMO RAMDISK.

[nobody willsee this video right?]

Originally posted by mx2k:

Why would one move the whole My Documents folder, just to change the FO4 savegame location

1. Copy or move the savegames from My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to the location desired, eg. G:\FO4Saves
2. Delete or rename the original Saves folder at My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to something else, eg. Saves.backup
3. Open cmd with admin rights and navigate to My Documents/Fallout4
4. Create a symlink to the new location with mklink

Basic Syntax:
mklink /D [linkname] [linktarget]

To follow my example:
mklink /D Saves G:\FO4Saves

This will create a directory symlink named "Saves" in the My Documents/Fallout4/ folder, which points to the new savegame location. Windows treats the directory symlink as a folder, and so does Fallout. Works completely flawless for me since 200+ hrs of gameplay.

i noticed that the link needs to be re created and can not be copied.
i mention it because i was doing troubleshooting and renamed my directory with all the config files in it rather than delete them and when the game created the new fallout directory i just copied the link to the new directory.
not a big deal, i just made a new link.
thanks for posting these instructions.

[anzestrela]

I need to know how to move saves cuz mine are saved in one drive and my game crushes as i save it + it doesent let me un readonly savedgames

PLEASE HELP

[ChrinschBRO]

Originally posted by mx2k:

Why would one move the whole My Documents folder, just to change the FO4 savegame location

1. Copy or move the savegames from My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to the location desired, eg. G:\FO4Saves
2. Delete or rename the original Saves folder at My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to something else, eg. Saves.backup
3. Open cmd with admin rights and navigate to My Documents/Fallout4
4. Create a symlink to the new location with mklink

Basic Syntax:
mklink /D [linkname] [linktarget]

To follow my example:
mklink /D Saves G:\FO4Saves

This will create a directory symlink named "Saves" in the My Documents/Fallout4/ folder, which points to the new savegame location. Windows treats the directory symlink as a folder, and so does Fallout. Works completely flawless for me since 200+ hrs of gameplay.

Thank you very much for the idea.
Sadly in my case it does NOTHING against Onedrive saving it in the cloud...
I did the same one time with a 2 GB file and that one was NOT saved in the cloud, but I believe as this is a linked folder it will still always save at some point...

So I can move the folder but Onedrive does not care... so stupid...

[cookj71]

Hi mx2k

Originally posted by mx2k:

Why would one move the whole My Documents folder, just to change the FO4 savegame location

1. Copy or move the savegames from My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to the location desired, eg. G:\FO4Saves
2. Delete or rename the original Saves folder at My Documents/Fallout4/Saves to something else, eg. Saves.backup
3. Open cmd with admin rights and navigate to My Documents/Fallout4
4. Create a symlink to the new location with mklink

Basic Syntax:
mklink /D [linkname] [linktarget]

To follow my example:
mklink /D Saves G:\FO4Saves

This will create a directory symlink named "Saves" in the My Documents/Fallout4/ folder, which points to the new savegame location. Windows treats the directory symlink as a folder, and so does Fallout. Works completely flawless for me since 200+ hrs of gameplay.

Could you put a little more context. I'm an old sys admin and I found myself misunderstanding some of this.

Like I didn't realize the mklink MUST create the folder you want to move.
The mklink command is creating the Saves folder. So you need to rename or move your saves to your new location then recreate the Saves folder with the mklink command.

For me it was:
Move my Fallout4 saves to the new drive and folder I want to keep them at.
Then remove the Saves Folder as mklink will need to recreate the Saves folder again

Also, if for any reason you need to point the Saves Folder to a new location you will delete the "Saves" link like any other folder and then use mklink again to point to the new location.
When you delete the "Saves" link you are not deleting the contents of the actual folder just the link. This also threw me until I got a better understanding.

If this was obvious to everyone else then I guess this is just for my own needed benefit.

Thanks mx2k for the help