Hi there!! .. My laptop has very limited space, and sadly I ran out room, and got annoyed. So, my question, is it possible for me to install the sims & have all sim-related files on an external drive? Any insight would be greatly appreciated !!

Installing programs on an external drive will work as long as:
- The external drive is always installed before the O/S needs it.
- The external drive is always assigned the same drive letter.

[QUOTE=Mootilda]Installing programs on an external drive will work as long as:
- The external drive is always installed before the O/S needs it.
- The external drive is always assigned the same drive letter.[/QokUOTE]

Ok thank youuu!! .. Will the game run like normal? Or should I expect it to be slower

Via an external USB is going to be slower than via an internal SATA cable or directly plugged into a SATA port as the case may be on a laptop.

Plus, if the USB port on the laptop is temperamental, and always prompt you that the USB connection is lost and Windows keeps detecting (and re-detecting), then the connection to the game would also be cut off. Some laptop's USB ports get loose over the years of always popping cable in and out.

Or...the danger of dropping the external HDD or have the cable forcibly yanked when you forget that the darn thing is plugged in and tried to move from the desk to the couch in front of the TV. *points to self

So be wary of the game and data getting corrupted if Windows cannot detect the HDD after such things (because the external HDD wasn't "ejected" before removal).

Even if you install Sims game at external drive,
game will still use your internal C drive to store its save game data (EA Games folder)
This folder may grow very big especially if you will have many mods installed (downloads folder)

But there is a way to move EA Games folder From My Documents to any other location
(eg. external drive) (It can be even useful to move any folder to any location including moving every expansion to
different location / disk, while the game will still look and work like its intact.)

Its very easy to do :
- You may move EA Games folder to new location,
- then in place where EA Games folder was before, create symbolic link pointing at new location
where this folder has been moved.
(Symbolic link will work like a real folder, you can open it, save files to it, game may access it ect.
but because its just link it will not take space within your My Documents drive,
because files are stored physically somewhere else.
- to create symbolic link you can type in command line
junction "old folder location" "new folder location"

It use junction command which is NOT part of windows distribution.
You can download junction command -> HERE

For more details about moving folders to other locations, you may read my guide -> HERE

Tricks :
If you have totaly no free space in your computer, I believe it may be even possible to do hardcore trick
and move game files to DVD-RW rom (!) then create symbolic link which points there and because these files are 'read only'
it should still work straight from DVD.
However, if you just got idea about moving game folders to network drive,
unfortunatelly it will not work, because junction cannot create links pointing to something that is on network drives.

Alternatively, you can use this to move your user files:
http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title...ownloads_Folder