igazor wrote: ↑December 10th, 2022, 2:29 am
Hi there, I don't think we're getting the full picture here, because what you have described couldn't possibly work even if the new drive were internal. Let's take a step back if we could.
There are two parts to the game's installation and setup that can be managed independently of each other, the program file installation and the TS3 user game folder, but they do need to work together. Your game (and its EPs and SPs) are installed on which drive? By default, that would be C:\Program Files (x86) (assuming C is your system drive and we are talking Windows here rather than a Mac), but the install can be directed to a location on a different drive if space is tight.
The user game folder must be in Documents. Or reachable from Documents. Again by default Documents would be on the C (system) drive but the entire Documents library can be redirected to a different drive by using settings in Windows. Or, alternatively, symlinks can be used to redirect a portion of Documents, let's say the EA\The Sims 3 folder, to a different drive but that's a bit fussy to set up.
But you can't just put the contents of what would be the user game folder in Documents someplace else and expect the game to know that it's meant to read and write to that location. There being no cache files spawning suggests to me that the game isn't actually using that user game folder, the one you added mods to, but another one located somewhere else such as back on the system drive. Where do your saved games actually show up?
So where have you actually got these things installed and how have you tried to manage the redirection of the user game folder? And how large, I mean small, is your system drive? External drive installs and user game folders are very problematic to game performance because of the latency caused by the game constantly reading from and writing to a slower external connection.
Finally, putting Package based content, such as mods, into Downloads will never work. The Downloads folder within the user game folder is for the Launcher to read from on startup and the Launcher only works with sims3pack content. Package files there will be ignored or could potentially confuse the Launcher since they would not be expected. Could you show us where on this site that it says otherwise?
The name of my external drive is Volume D. From there, it's documents, sims 3...
The external drive is 500G, and the computer only has about 27 Gigs, so if possible, I'd like to keep things on the drive. The expansion packs are installed on the external drive, but I have noticed an error because whatever is put onto the external drive has been duplicated to the computer (This PC > Documents > Electronic Arts > Sims 3. So probably an error somewhere in the installation.
But I am noticing the game is smooth and running fine. The only problem is getting the Nraas installed.
Saved games are located on the computer (and not the external drive) in the Sims 3 folder.
So it seems like I need to uninstall and reinstall? Could you possibly pinpoint what step in the installation where I made the error as far as Nraas? And I guess overall, since my saves are still going directly to the computer.
And as far as the advice to move the .package files to downloads, it was a random forum from 2009. Couldn't find any advice, and it was a last resort before making this account and posting my question here.
Looks like the best fix would be to get another computer then. Are there any that can run the sims 3 and have lots of storage for under 1k USD?