Help me bring my people to the promised land!

January 1, 2008 12:34 PM

Sim 2 Transfer: Brand new 80 GB removable hard drive... How?

I have a Sims habit that was starting to eat into the limited remaining memory of my beloved but now rather old laptop. Parental units gifted me with 80 more GB of memory. How do I transfer the game to this little, wafer thin box with minimal difficulty?

I would guess I need to save the Sim families that are important to me via exporting. Then de-install the whole game (expansions and all) and re-install the game on the new E: drive. I have all the expansions up to 'Seasons'. Will this be as seamless as I hope? Will it run okay from the usb plug in drive or has my limited tech knowledge failed me?

PS. Happy New Year!

posted by Phalene to computers & internet (9 comments total)

I remember helping someone out with this awhile back and it wasn't seamless at all on re-installing expansion packs...mostly because of the copy protection software that is on the CDs (safedisc I believe). My first recommendation is to find the Sims directory under your c:\program files\ and copy the Maxis directory from there to your new drive under e:\program files\ (create directories as needed).

Then on your c: drive, rename your Maxis directory to Maxis.bak, and modify your Desktop shortcuts to point to E:\ instead of C:\.

If that works, you're golden...if not, then you can try re-installing the game to e:\program files\ and your original data should all be in there (plus you'll have a backup still on your C: drive that you can delete later once you're sure it's all working)
posted by samsara at 1:08 PM on January 1, 2008

(just to add tho, installing/moving Sims2 can turn into a nightmare...luckily it's been around long enough that googling any of the error messages you run into should provide solutions...the toughest errors to get around are usually the copy protection ones, less so are incompatibility problems with certain versions of graphic drivers)
posted by samsara at 1:17 PM on January 1, 2008

Running programs off an external hard drive is usually a last resort for me.

Do you have any other files that you can move to your new drive to free up space? Mp3s, photos, etc?
posted by agenais at 1:56 PM on January 1, 2008

@agenais

No. If it was that easy I'd delete'em or burn 'em to CD. The problem is that that the game, after five or so expansions, is a giant space hog. I can fit everything now, but if I get the next two it'll be lag hell.
posted by Phalene at 2:08 PM on January 1, 2008

I think you're confusing space on a hard drive with memory (RAM). While a full hard drive will negatively impact your computer's performance, what you really need is more RAM to run the next two expansion packs, as well.
posted by astruc at 2:45 PM on January 1, 2008

I think Sims 2 is storing your files in the "My Documents" folder. (Wtf? Anyway...) Check to be sure there are large Sims files in there, but then you can move the entirety of the My Documents folder correctly by right clicking on it and while holding down the right mouse button dragging it to the new location where you want it to be, when you let go of it, it will give you a small menu where you can select "Move here" or something else obvious. (No, I don't know why they couldn't use a normal, sane, documented method, but there ya go.) XP should now recognize that the special My Documents folder is wherever you put it, Sims should still be saving to the special My Documents folder, wherever you put it. Be sure to make extra backups beforehand, because, y'know, Windows. This should move the largest and growing files, leaving you with room for the actual program files, including expansions, on your main disc.

Note that immediately after doing this would be a good time to do a defrag of your main disc, for one thing you will actually hopefully have enough free space to do one, for another moving a large number of files around is the definition of when you need to defrag, especially considering you're running out of space.
posted by anaelith at 3:11 PM on January 1, 2008

Sims2 Save files should be stored in something like "My Documents\EA Games\The Sims 2". You should be able to uninstall the existing games and reinstall on the E:\ Drive with no impact.

During the install, if it asks if you want to delete your saved files, say NO! Also you may want to back up that Sims 2 Folder in My Documents just to be safe.
posted by stew560 at 7:20 PM on January 1, 2008 [2 favorites]

"During the Uninstall..."
posted by stew560 at 7:20 PM on January 1, 2008

Stew's answer is much better than mine. I'd go with that.
posted by samsara at 12:18 PM on January 2, 2008