Install location

[Starhawk Ranger]

I have several expansions that I have installed on my C: drive SSD. I'll be buying the rest of the expansions today and I want to uninstall what I have and reinstall all of them in order BUT on my E: drive SSD which is much bigger than my C: drive. I'd like to know if I'm going to have issues doing this or will I have to make a sacrifice to the computer gods, bay at the moon while hopping on one foot and/or jump through hoops? Any info is appreciated!

[marstinson]

Your installation will go wherever you tell Steam to put it and there should be no problems on that end of things. It's exactly how my own installation is set up (game files are on my E:\ drive). Order of installation for the EPs does not matter, however, because Steam will just deliver the whole shootin' match in one big download (about 32GB if you're buying everything). The game uses your \Documents folder as the location for your saved games and whatnot and that is hard-coded into the game. While it's possible to move \Documents to your HDD, you'll see some performance benefits by leaving it on your SSD as your loads and saves will go much faster. As long as you are reasonably diligent about limiting the size and number of saves, you'll be fine.

[igazor]

If the OP has two SSDs as they have indicated (and if I am reading that correctly), then shifting the Windows defined Documents folder to the larger one should not impact performance at all.

[Starhawk Ranger]

Yes, you are reading it correctly igazor. I have two SSDs, C: has 223 usable of which more than half is empty and I still have a couple of things I want to move to E, which has 465 usable of which almost all of it is empty.

I didn't want to move the documents (saved games) over because it just looked like a real hassle. I'm pretty sure I won't have an issue with space. I just wanted to ask if the game would work ok if the game files were on one ssd and the saved files on another. I'm sorry if I confused you.

My next question would be can't I have Steam install them one by one? I really haven't been using Steam very long so I'm not very savvy. Thank you both for your help.

[marstinson]

Originally posted by Starhawk Ranger:

My next question would be can't I have Steam install them one by one? I really haven't been using Steam very long so I'm not very savvy. Thank you both for your help.

My bad for not carefully reading the original question, but I'm glad the answer was pretty much what you were looking for.

As to being able to download one-by-one, it's possible, but it's a bit of a pain to accomplish. The first step would be to uninstall the game. Since you were planning to do this to move it over to the other drive, it's no big deal. After you do that, but before you reinstall, run a registry cleaner to get rid of a bit of junk that gets left hanging and I'd recommend restarting your computer afterward to make sure that the cleaned up registry gets loaded. If you do not have a registry cleaner, CCleaner from piriform (the free version) will do the job, but it will nag you about going premium and getting updates. Feel free to ignore the nagging; it's not a time-limited demo version.

Now go into your library, right-click the game, select properties, go to the DLC tab and uncheck everything. You might be able to do this from the DLC pane in the library with the game selected, but I use the DLC tab to make sure that Steam is absolutely clear about what I want installed. Before hitting that "install" button, go to \Documents\Electronic Arts\ and delete the Sims 3 folder. I'm assuming you have no mods or custom content. If this is not a safe assumption, rename it to something like "Sims 3 Old" and you can copy stuff to the new folder later. Double-check that Steam is still set to only install the base game and hit that install button and you should be back to 2009 with a patched base game.

Since you said you wanted to install the EPs and such in order, my best guess is that you want to play around with each piece for a bit before adding the next. Perfectly cool. EP1 is World Adventures, so whenever you're ready to go vacationing, go back to the DLC tab and check it (make sure the rest stay unchecked) and exit out to your library. You may need to restart Steam (Steam -> Exit -> relaunch) to get it to start downloading, though. Before launching the game, go into \Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 3 and delete the five *cache.package files. The game will recreate them when you launch, but this forces it to scan for new content (like World Adventures). Rinse and repeat as you're ready for each new piece until they are all installed. You'll find the EPs in the order they were released here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sims_3#Expansion_packs

If you have mods and/or custom content and any of it requires specific EPs to be in place, you can copy those bits back over as you get each piece installed. Other stuff like Overwatch and ErrorTrap (available from nraas.net and you should be using them) don't require anything other than the base game, so you can just copy over the \Mods folder and delete any others that you don't want/need at the moment. Once World Adventures is in go back to nraas.net and get Traveler and always delete those *cache.package files each time you make a content change to force a new scan.

I'd recommend not copying over your saved games if you currently have any EPs installed, but starting a household in the base game and then playing it through the addition of each EP sounds like a cool idea. Have some fun with it.

[Starhawk Ranger]

Thanks so much for the detailed instructions, unfortunately Steam had other plans. I thought everything you bought waited for you to download at your convenience. I have a couple of games waiting there as we speak. After I purchased the EPs they were immediately downloaded behind my back. I uninstalled everything and installed it all on my E drive before I saw your message. I had renamed my original documents folder so I got a brand new one. I still can't log into the sims 3 site through the launcher lol I swear these people are incompetent or something.

I only have the Overwatch mod that I got when I played a bit in Bridgeport. I'll look into getting errortrap and traveler. Again, thanks so much for the help. It's time to test it all!