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Test Subject
Original Poster
#1 Old 19th Nov 2011 at 4:40 PM

This user has the following games installed:

Sims 3, World Adventures, Ambitions, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Showtime, Supernatural, Seasons, University Life, Island Paradise, Into the Future
Default Moving Documents Folder to a Flash Drive
First and foremost, I am extremely uncertain where I should put this thread and it took me a while to settle on putting it here, but if it is placed incorrectly please move it for me.

I am on an older Toshiba laptop with my game. And it's been working perfectly fine, give or take the typical glitches that everyone else has had (which have all been resolved in a timely manner).
That is, until I installed Late Night. The game itself still works perfectly fine, it's not glitching or anything. However my gameplay is now incredibly choppy and I believe it is because I do not have enough room on the computer for the poor thing to function properly.
I have been disk cleaning and defragmenting every day, but that really only does so much. Especially since my fiance got me Pets, and I would LOVE to download it.

I wondered if it would be a good idea to place my game on an external hard drive (EDH), however after doing a little bit of research it was basically determined that doing that would probably have the same effect on the game, since it's not running directly from the computer. Not to mention the price of an EDH that would work well enough to do something like that.

So I've begun wondering about perhaps moving my Documents folder to the 4GB flash drive that I have. I tried to do some research about this, however I found absolutely no information on if I would be capable of doing that without uninstalling my games (which I would rather not do), as I am concerned that if I do that then the folder will become disconnected from the game.

I am wondering if anyone else has any experience with this, and if they know whether or not this is possible - or even a good idea.
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Field Researcher
#2 Old 19th Nov 2011 at 4:52 PM
Oh! Let me tell you my USB story.. its similar

So I had my old laptop and everything was going fine with sims. But all of a sudden, my computer started to crash. I would get the "lenovo blue screen of death", and after a while I couldn't even get into the computer on standard mode (i had to go into "safe mode") In a panic, I realized my 7 generation legacy was on this computer, and if I wiped out the entire computer, then it would be gone too. So what I did was I found a USB and plugged it into the computer on safemode, took the ENTIRE sims 3 folder (documents/electronic arts/--->Sims 3<---) and put it on the USB. Right after that, my computer wouldn't turn back on, so I got rid of it and ordered the new one i am typing on right now I started this one up and the first thing I did was install all of the games that were on my computer before (so nothing would go wrong) and I started up sims. By starting it, it makes a new electronic arts/Sims 3 folder. I closed the game and went into documents/electronic arts/sims 3. I deleted the Sims 3 that was on the computer originally, plugged in my USB, and put the old sims 3 folder in there. It's worked fine ever since


Is this anything like what you're doing? Hope I can help, i'm just a little confused as to what exactly you're doing
Test Subject
Original Poster
#3 Old 19th Nov 2011 at 5:00 PM
Not quite, I'm not looking to make a backup of it, like it sounds like you did since I all ready have a backup.
I'm wondering if it's possible for me to literally move my entire Documents folder onto the flash and run it from the flash while still having it be connected to my game so that my game doesn't go wonky and think that there isn't a Documents folder anymore.
Theorist
#4 Old 19th Nov 2011 at 5:06 PM
Don't know if you can run it from a flash but I know you can run it from an external drive. A friend of mine does that with his sims game. I was going to do the same but as I already had my game on my C drive, I'll just wait until I need to uninstall/reinstall the game to do that... which should be when I get Generations. I usually end up doing an uninstall/reinstall of the game with each new EP and I didn't have to do it when I installed Late Night... which shocked the heck out of me.. because it ran so smoothly. No lag, no glitch, no nothing.. just like playing base game with no CC it was fabulous.. still is. If Generations behaves like LN did, I will be waiting for the next one before I do that

Life is short, insecurity is a waste of time. ~Diane Von Furstenburg
You don't get out of life alive. ~Jimmy the Hand

♥ Receptacle Refugee ♥
Test Subject
Original Poster
#5 Old 19th Nov 2011 at 6:29 PM
Yeah, I know you can do it from a EHD, but I'm hoping that we won't have to go that far since those things are unbelievably expensive, at least good ones are.

I really didn't understand the rest of your post, though... Sorry.
Top Secret Researcher
#6 Old 20th Nov 2011 at 6:38 AM
Oooh, a chance to geek out!

The rule of (pardon the expression) thumb for flash drives is that they're quite slow for sequential accesses and especially writes, but can be faster than hard drives (even internal ones) for small, scattered accesses. That's why a USB flash drive in some situations can speed up Windows system processes. So your idea might very well be worth a try, if your slow-down is due to too little disk space for something that the game hits frequently and randomly. It could come at the cost of much slower performance on long sequential reads like loading and saving the game, but maybe that's OK as a tradeoff if the actual play is faster.

I can suggest and experiment to find out whether your game is suffering from lack of disk space for the cache. It amounts to finding out whether the game would use more space if it could get it. What if you:
(1) Note the size of the files in your cache directories under Sims3
(2) Remove them
(3) Copy a great big amount of non-Sim-related files to your flash drive for safekeeping
(4) Remove those files to make room on your hard drive
(5) Play the same game again and see if the cache files are bigger than before
(6) Blow the cache away again and copy your other files back from the flash.

If the game uses more disk space in step (5), then it would probably use that space on a flash, if you made the move you're thinking of. And then since flashes are good for small random accesses, you might have less disk-related pausing in the game.

But there might be an easier solution. Maybe your game is OK in itself, but the myriad operating system processes hit the disk more often when it's near to full. Google for "ReadyBoost" and see if you can try that, (a) because it's easier than moving your files around and (b) it might help a bunch, by letting your game access the internal hard drive without so much competition from the system processes.

There. I said I was going to geek out and I did.
Née whiterider
retired moderator
#7 Old 20th Nov 2011 at 9:46 PM
Good geeking. However I'm afraid I have to warn against placing Windows system directories on USB drives. USB drives are slow to be recognised by the OS, and their drive letters can change if you add/remove other removable devices. This causes Windows to start up, go "Crap! Where's the Documents directory gone?!", crap out and make a new one, resetting the path to the default C:/Users/Whatever.

I do know that some people have done this with external drives: They assign the drive to volume letter Z: and never, ever, ever unplug it. It can work, but it's a pain. I don't know if it would also work with a USB drive. If you try it, backup first!

What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact.
Test Subject
Original Poster
#8 Old 23rd Nov 2011 at 8:27 PM
Thank you both!
Locked thread | Locked by: ellacharm3d Reason: answered
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