Move Dragon Age Installation to New Hard Drive - How?

[NexusBob42]

I want to move the Dragon Age installation, including all settings, DLCs, and mods, to a secondary solid state hard drive. How do I do this?

 

Thanks lots.

[Thandal]

Short answer is: "It's possible."

 

Longer answer is: "Just how comfortable are you doing registry edits, creating Windows OS internal file 'symbolic links' and 'junctions points', or using unofficial, third-party tools such as 'Life Hacker'?"

 

Better answer: Just do a complete un-/re-install to the new location. This approach has a much higher chance of success with far less frustration along the way. So unless your internet usage is metered and you're doing the digital download install, or you love poking about in your system's guts, it's the one I'd chose. :thumbsup:

 

NOTE: Your "Settings", "Mods", "Characters", and Saves", (and, depending on your specific game version, perhaps even your DLC) will be found under your Player Profile in your User's Documents folder, not the game-program folders. Relocating that is actually far easier, since it's just a single pointer in the registry and Windows already knows how to handle things if you move that folder. But not sure you really want to move everything in "My Documents". :laugh:

[NexusBob42]

Short answer is: "It's possible."

 

Longer answer is: "Just how comfortable are you doing registry edits, creating Windows OS internal file 'symbolic links' and 'junctions points', or using unofficial, third-party tools such as 'Life Hacker'?"

 

Better answer: Just do a complete un-/re-install to the new location. This approach has a much higher chance of success with far less frustration along the way. So unless your internet usage is metered and you're doing the digital download install, or you love poking about in your system's guts, it's the one I'd chose. :thumbsup:

 

NOTE: Your "Settings", "Mods", "Characters", and Saves", (and, depending on your specific game version, perhaps even your DLC) will be found under your Player Profile in your User's Documents folder, not the game-program folders. Relocating that is actually far easier, since it's just a single pointer in the registry and Windows already knows how to handle things if you move that folder. But not sure you really want to move everything in "My Documents". :laugh:

Thanks.

[NexusBob42]

I found an easy way to move my Dragon Age installation to my secondary, solid-state hard drive! This methods keeps all settings and mods intact!

 

Instructions (Windows Vista, 7, and 8 only)

 

This assumes that the directory on drive “C” is the one that Dragon Age was originally installed to (the “original” folders), and the installation will be moved to drive “E” (the “final” folders). Keep in mind that your original Dragon Age installation paths may be different! You can modify both the original as well as the final file directory.

 

It may be worth creating backups of your original folders just in case!

 

 

Move folder

C:\program files (x86)\Dragon Age

to

e:\

 

Delete C:\program files (x86)\Dragon Age\

 

 

Move folder

C:\Users\username\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age

to a new folder you manually create

e:\dragon age user data

 

Delete C:\Users\username\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age

 

 

Click the Start button, type cmd and run cmd.exe as an ADMINISTRATOR

 

 

Type

 

mklink /j "C:\program files (x86)\Dragon Age\" "e:\dragon age"

 

mklink /j "C:\Users\username\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age" "e:\dragon age user data\dragon age"

 

 

Note that this file movement method is still reliant on having access to the registry entries of the original drive C.

 

If you ever want to install Dragon Age onto a completely new computer, while still allowing access to all your settings and mods, I am guessing the following should work:

 

Install Dragon Age with the regular installer onto the new computer (to create relevant registry entries)

Patch the game

Delete the following folders:

C:\program files (x86)\Dragon Age

C:\Users\username\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age

Connect the solid state drive to the computer

Run the CMD prompts noted earlier

Edited January 19, 2014 by NexusBob42

[Thandal]

<snip>

Type

 

mklink /j "C:\program files (x86)\Dragon Age\" "e:\dragon age"

 

mklink /j "C:\Users\username\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age" "e:\dragon age user data\dragon age"

 

 

The command mklink /j: "Make [a symbolic] Link [with the following directory] Junction", is what I was referring to. It works great for straight forward redirects and as long as every other program that interacts with the re-located files uses only the absolutely standard Windows APIs to do so. This is not always a valid assumption when dealing either with games and their "official" patches, or with mods. :laugh:

 

Over time one forgets that one made this change and then can't figure out why one can't get other programs (think "DAMM" especially with NBaio and NV4; "NMM"; the "CharGenMorph Compiler"; or back-up utilities) to work properly. :pinch:

 

But if it works for you, go for it!