Can I move SimCity 4 to a different drive? [Solved]

[Pepe The Great 227]

Hello all

I just got myself a brand new NVME2.0 drive, so I want to move my SimCity 4 game files into the new drive, which will allow the game to load much faster. Currently my game sits on a mechanical drive or a HDD, and it is the same drive that my steam was installed. so I wonder can I move my SimCity 4 to my new drive? I remember doing this before, and the game showed me error messages when I tried to play. 

Thanks!

[Pepe The Great 227]

i have moved the game into a different drive, but the problem i face right now is that i can no longer launch the game through SimCity 4 Launcher. however, i can still launch the game through steam. i don't know what's causing this problem, once i enter the game, everything is functioning as intended, i did not experience any crashes, however, some of my mods don't work, such as the "extra cheat plugins". 

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

I believe this is somewhat connected to your previous topic about the "invisible" Plugins folder.

If you have just installed a new piece of hardware to your machine, you also need to reinstall SimCity to this drive.

Again, copy-pasting files just won't do. By the way, how did you transfer the game to the new drive? By what means?

From our user perspective it seems conflicting, I know. "It's just the same machine, right?" Well, not to your system. Technically, these are two distinct locations and I don't think the properties and all data necessary just get "inherited" like that.

Quote

i have moved the game into a different drive, but the problem i face right now is that i can no longer launch the game through SimCity 4 Launcher.

 

This, I believe, is a telltale sign that the new drive simply doesn't recognize that the game is "there" so to say. The Launcher is unable to detect the .exe or at least considers the .exe as some useless file rather than an actual executable.

[Pepe The Great 227]

15 hours ago, TheMurderousCricket said:

I believe this is somewhat connected to your previous topic about the "invisible" Plugins folder.

If you have just installed a new piece of hardware to your machine, you also need to reinstall SimCity to this drive.

Again, copy-pasting files just won't do. By the way, how did you transfer the game to the new drive? By what means?

From our user perspective it seems conflicting, I know. "It's just the same machine, right?" Well, not to your system. Technically, these are two distinct locations and I don't think the properties and all data necessary just get "inherited" like that.

 

This, I believe, is a telltale sign that the new drive simply doesn't recognize that the game is "there" so to say. The Launcher is unable to detect the .exe or at least considers the .exe as some useless file rather than an actual executable.

thanks for the reply, after some trials and errors i have solved my problem. i have reinstalled the game to my new NVME2.0 drive, then I went to my steam installation folder, and copied Steam.exe into the my SimCity 4 game folder located inside the NVME2.0 drive (which is drive E:). right now i'm able to use SimCity 4 launcher again, and all my custom plugins are functioning as intended. thanks!

[mertzigzag 48]

I'll point out that you don't actually have to fully reinstall to make such a move work... you can also use symbolic links to effectively move files (see https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/ for a primer on what symbolic links are and how to use them).

Basically, you move the actual contents of, say C:\Program Files\Maxis to E:\SimCity or whatever location you want on your new NVME drive while still leaving the shell of C:\Program Files\Maxis\ in place.  You can also move your save games somewhere else too, like instead of C:\Users\Youruser Name\Documents\SimCity 4\ copy stuff into E:\SimCity Files\ or whatever.  Then use a symbolic link to point the original two directories to the new locations.

I used this strategy to move my SimCity install and save game files to a new faster SSD and it worked like a charm, including working just fine with SC4 Launcher.