Hard drive about to be full ... The Sims is eating my computer! I have a kinda low end machine that meets the minimum requirements, but it has a huge hard drive and now I've only got 800 MB left ... Sims is by far the largest culprit. So I need advice ... I have too many neighborhoods, thanks to my daughter who likes to create them ... I've talked her into getting rid of one or two of them and letting me consolidate for her (she doesn't really play, just builds houses and families, so breaking relationship links doesn't matter in her case). Will that help? She tends to use all three universities and then build a fourth, per nabe, so I'm hoping getting rid of three or four neighborhoods will free up some space. Which would leave me with six (three for me, three for her), not including the freebie 'hoods that came with the game, which I never play. Is there anything else I can do? I've already deleted all my movies as they didn't turn out that well (not my thing). Should I delete unused family pix as well? What's the biggest space hog? I'd hate to play and then not be able to save ... Thanks for your help.
Each neighborhood uses up at least 70MB ... and the more you build the bigger it gets. After an unfortunate incident involving a non-existent back-up file I am now playing with one new 'hood and no more than 6 main families. (I add new blood occasionally, as well as dragging one or two of the better looking townies out to go to Uni ... my sims also tend to bring home a soul mate when they graduate ... ) Anyway that 'hood is up to 140MB and I've not even got all 6 families up and running yet! There is only one uni campus and not that many custom built lots either. So maybe you'd better get your daughter to rationalise her 'hoods. With only 800MB free space left you are courting disaster. Windoze needs lots and lots of elbow room. I always aimed to keep 33% free space back in the days when hard drives were measured in tens and hundreds of megabytes. Now we are into GB that rule can be relaxed ... but I would relax it too far. Aim to keep at least 10% free, if not 20%.
Thanks, Mirelly. I will try to reason with her ... she's seven, so wish me luck. My neighborhood is huge, much larger than 6 families. I'm sure I'm the bigger culprit, but it is my game ...
i am thankfull my hubby is a HD collector, right now in my computer we have over 500g of space but because of dling i'm always burning lol.i have found a good format always helps when it comes to space iusses. Backup and then format. It gives out the computer a good clean and then when you reinstall you can delet what ones you do want and dont want. My kids also have their own computer cause i am not ready to give up the faster one yet which helps me out. If ya can't be bothed formatting try debugging its easy get it going before bed and by the time you get up it should of finished. Try to delet the stuff you dont use. I reguary go though my movies and pic and delet the ones i wont use or arnt funny.
But if I reformat won't I lose my Sims? I don't have CD burning capabilities (told you it was an older machine) and they just don't fit on a zip disk. I'm waaaaaay too attached to my main neighborhood. I'm gonna try to cut down on my other neighborhoods, delete unnecessary files (Sim and non-Sim) and get my husband to store his graphics on a zip ... That should help a little. Would killing people off help? I do have Sims I don't like as much ...
I doubt that your running windows xp seeing you said it was an older comp, but if you are, there a major cleanup is needed because it requires at least 15% free in order to do a disc defrag. But anyway, other things you can do if you havent done them all ready, clean out your cookies, they may be ahandy on occasion, but are unnessesary, clean out temp files, get rid of useless set up files, when downloading something from the internet, rather that saving the file, alot of the time you get the same effect if you run it instead (thats what I do for my sim downloads as the files get saved in the ea folder once opened). Music files take up a hell of alot of room too, get rid of the files you no longer listen to. I dont think killing off a sim or 2 will make very much difference at this point, but you can try it and see how it goes, the main thing to do would be going through your saved sim file in 'my documents' and deleting from there, but that can be risky. Finally, get hubby to buy you a new comp and give the old one to daughter.
Even older computers have the capability to have larger hard drives installed if your BIOS will support them. Plus, there are such things as outside CD burners, which can be attached to older models via USB. What I'd suggest if you plan on keeping this computer your game computer or if you don't want to spend money on a newer, better one, is to get a new harddrive. Check if your computer has the space to hold two. It'd be a simple matter of installing the new harddrive, shifting all the files ( your hubby's graphics, for example ) you're storing from the old one onto the new, and voil, free space. Or, if your computer doesn't have the space to hold two harddrives, buy an external harddrive. They don't cost the world anymore, can be attached by USB or other means, and basically work like normal harddrives do.
Thank you! Very good advice. I had been wondering if installing a second hard drive would affect my current one. Now I know I can install one without killing my sims. Good to know! Just in case anyone else is having this problem, I did find a solution (for now). I deleted my projects in Body Shop. I kept the ones that had been saved to the game (they're in a separate folder, FYI). If I want to use the special patterns I made (sheath dress, sexy workout clothes) I can copy the versions saved to the game already. I also consolidated three of my daughter's neighborhoods into one and got rid of three additional neighborhoods that never got played much anyway. And I deleted some sim family photos that didn't turn out. Not sure how much that saved, but I had a lot of them. Altogether, I freed up 2 GB, which gives me a lot more breathing room. (I had a LOT of projects in BodyShop. I had no idea they took up so much room ...) But I'm going to look into a second hard drive as well. Thanks, everyone, for your help and advice. Much appreciated!
Oh, and when I was done I defragmented my hard drive. I have yet to clean up my cookies, etc., but the computer is already running a bit faster. Thanks again, everyone. BTW, I just bought this computer ... actually upgraded a hand-me-down. Hard to go to hubby and say, um, I need another one ...
