Links and External Hard Drives

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I've no way to test this on Windows or Mac, but today I moved my SimCity 4 folder from my internal hard disk to my new 1TB back up drive, and it works with both decors I run.

All I did to make this work was to put a link in the old spot where the folder had been with exactly the same name (having renamed the link to be exactly "SimCity 4"). I run two different versions of Linux, of which one is a beta test, and I was getting annoyed with not being able to keep my SC4 files in sync.

Since I have this nice new backup disk, I decided to try using it as a place to keep my sc4 user files. So, from my production operating system partition, I moved the entire SimCity 4 folder to the new disk, and made a link there as well. Then I copied the link back to my internal hard drive and renamed it.

I then switched to my test decor on the other partition of my hard drive, and deleted the SimCity 4 directory there. Then I copied and renamed the link from the auxiliary drive.

To my utter delight, both versions of the operating system can start and run SimCity 4 (the program files are installed on both). So now, with my user files off the hard disk altogether, I save having two, possibly out-of-sync sets of regions and plugins, I have a single set, and I can dismount that disk and shut it off. Of course you still need the CD in your drive to authenticate your run.

This should also work for people who have both a desktop and a laptop provided they are willing to lug around a spare disk drive (not smart, but possible), or multiple machines where you want to play the same set of regions and keep them in sync. No copying, and no fuss. If these disks are on a server, all the better.

And, of course, I can backup the whole business to the other external hard drive. (yes, I have two physical external hard drives. I believe in insurance.) I know that most of us don't do operating system testing, but there are advantages in this little technical tip that are rather obvious if you are hard up for on-line space. And, of course, an external hard drive costs considerably less than a whole computer if you have to replace your machine because your disk packed in.

I wanted to share this with the community, because the price of a disk might save you a lot of frustration.

Update: I applied the same technique to the Mixis folder in Program Files on both systems. Worked as expected. So, I now, with the exception of Registry Entries (which I have saved separately), I can now switch over without loss of continuity from one decor to another. This makes switching between systems a piece of cake especially when I may do a reinstall of the test O/S as the beta progresses.

[bigthing 35]

I too have found that SC4 is quite susceptible to being fooled by short cuts and fake folders. At one point my SC4 disk was so scratched that when i came to install the game the sound.dat folder would not install. Also without the folder SC4 would not start. I just created a new folder called Sound.dat and it was fooled!The only problem I found was when I came to patch the game. It refused... so a great temporary solution!