Migrating NMM between HDDs - help please! :D

[SwissSanchez]

Hi all, possibly not posting this in the right subforum but I hope it gets seen by someone who can help me.

 

So in my naivety I installed NMM on my SSD gaming partition. Due to space constraints and my ever-burgeoning quota of lovely, lovely FO4 mods I'm pretty much out of room! Not my fault, the mod authors are putting out far too much kickass work.

 

I'd like to migrate NMM across to my cavernous HDD, but of course I'd like to keep my extensive mod set-up without spending days reinstalling everything. To avoid potential f*#@-ups could someone more knowledgeable in such matters provide me with a quick how-to? I was thinking Create Mod Backup, uninstall NMM and then reinstall and import the backup. Is that likely to do the job?

 

TIA for any advice!

[JonathanOstrus]

I've not used the Mod Backup feature yet so I have no idea how that would work.

 

There's a couple options depending on your computer savviness. You will need to know where the mods archive folder is. This is not the virtual install folder. I wouldn't make any attempt to move that. Doing so would require uninstalling all your mods, moving it, then enabling the multi hd mode. Qwerky and doesn't really save you space unless you have a lot of "installed" but not "enabled" mods. I.E. red slashed circles. If they're green checkmarks they're installed and enabled and take the same space either way.

 

To start off with, and arguably the easiest option, is to use Steam Mover. Don't let the name fool you. It's not just for Steam stuffs. By default the first time it's run, it will pick your "Steam\SteamApps\common" folder as the source. Simply click the "..." box to select a different source folder as a root. Select the destination of where you want it to go then click the blue arrow to move things and make a junction. See below for example of which folder to choose.

 

Alternatively I like using a tool called Junction Magic. The short how to for this would be:

1. Move your desired mod folder to your new drive.
2. Use Junction Magic to make a junction from the old location to the new one.
3. You're done. Go enjoy your game.

For a reference, my old path as seen in NMM is "C:\Games\Nexus Mod Manager\Fallout4\Mods". I moved the whole "Nexus Mod Manager" folder to my J: drive. There was no longer a "C:\Games\Nexus Mod Manager" folder. Then use Junction Magic to make a junction pointing from "C:\Games\Nexus Mod Manager" to the new "J:\Games\Nexus Mod Manager". I chose to move the base NMM folder because it also had Skyrim mods along with Fallout4. This gets both at once that way. This also has a benefit that, if for any reason, I need to move the mods from the J: drive to yet some other drive. I can easily just copy or move it, then change the junction point. I don't have to make any chances inside NMM for any of the games.

 

To accomplish the same result using Steam Mover, I would select "C:\Games" as the base and then "J:\Games" as the destination. Then click the arrow on "Nexus Mod Manager" for it to move it and do the junction the same way I created it.

 

Another alternative would be to move the folder in question to another location, then inside NMM change the settings for the game you're working with. Pointing the path to a different mods folder. And probably/optionally the Install Info folder. If you were to do as I did and move the whole Nexus Mod Manager folder like I did, you would have to go in and update each installed game that had mods under that base folder. Since I have not used this method I'm not sure how it would respond if the original folder is entirely missing when launching (best case is barf errors I assume). I also have no idea how it would respond if you open NMM, then move things, and then update the path before shutting it down (probably crash).

 

Hope that helps.