Can you backup and later restore a modded Fallout 4 and the "workfolders" to another drive?

[Starfire12]

I'd like to uninstall Fallout4 as I finished my current game and need the SSD space. Since I probably will want to play it again some time in the future, I was wondering if there is a way to preserve the installation in it's current form. So question:

If I were to copy-paste:

1. The FO4 installation folder in Steam.

2. The folder that Vortex downloads the mod archives to.

3. The folder that Vortex unpacks mods to for deployment

to my portable HDD before uninstalling FO4 and deleting the files on my SSD, could I then put everything back how it was before and pick up where I left of or would Vortex and/or Windows refuse to work with that and insist my installtion is corrupt, missing, etc?

If it doesn't work is there another way to backup and restore the current state of a Vortex modded Fallout 4?

[Pickysaurus]

Sounds like you're asking the very question this help article covers. https://modding.wiki/en/vortex/users/migrating-to-a-new-pc

[Starfire12]

18 minutes ago, Pickysaurus said:

Sounds like you're asking the very question this help article covers. https://modding.wiki/en/vortex/users/migrating-to-a-new-pc

Sorta. Not sure If I should purge the mods, though. I have enough space on the portable HDD to just copy everything. My biggets worry is this though:

If I follow these steps and then delete everything on the SSD, Vortex is probably going to report any number of errors, even after following this guide. However I'd still like to use it for modding Skyrim instead of just leaving it unused until playing Fallout 4 again. Anyway thanks for the help, that should cover the most important steps at any rate.

[showler]

The reason why you purge your mods is that the files in your data directory are not real files, they are just links.  But if you copy them to another drive, Windows will treat them as real files and you'll take up more space than you need.  Also, when you restore them later Vortex will be confused by them now being real files rather than links.

[Starfire12]

1 hour ago, showler said:

The reason why you purge your mods is that the files in your data directory are not real files, they are just links.  But if you copy them to another drive, Windows will treat them as real files and you'll take up more space than you need.  Also, when you restore them later Vortex will be confused by them now being real files rather than links.

Understood. Will do that then.