New hard drive, old sims?

L33tP33tNW

I know I should post this in technical discussions, but I have no idea where it should go here on the forums, and I don't really understand the EA forums. Anyway, a while back I got a new hard drive, reinstalled the sims 4, and opened up the game, only to find that all my saves were gone! I started over, reinstalled my mods, but I still miss my old sims. Does anyone know if there is a way to get them back?

DeKay

You have to retrieve them back from your old hard drive under the "Saves" folder in the Electronic Arts > The Sims 4 folder (usually installed in your Documents).

To get your sims back in your library, they will be in the "Tray" folder.

WaytoomanyUIDs

I would also post in the Sims 4 Technical Discussion forum here, its quiet but they generally informative, but here goes:

So first find your old hard drive, if you don't have that your sims are lost for good.

If it's not already in your machine as a secondary drive, probably the easiest thing to do would be to put in in a external hard drive caddy and plug it in as that

So open Explorer and look for the drive under "This PC"

it will probably be mounted as the D or E drive

find it and open it

You will see a "Users" folder, open it

Inside the Users folder wildd be a list of folders, including your user name on the PC, "Public" "Default" and maybe a couple of others

Open your user folder, for the purposes of this example i will call it Doggers123, it will be called something else

There will be a long list of folders, ignore those and look for the "Documents" folder and open it

In the Documents folder will be a long list look for the "Electronic Arts" folder, open it


In there will be a couple of folders. Open the "The Sims 4" folder


If you look at the top of the Explorer window you will see a path that looks something like

E:\Users\Doggers123\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4

or

This PC > Local Disc (E:) > Users > Doggers123 > Documents > Electronic Arts > The Sims 4


If the drive (disk) letter is C: not \D: E: or another letter there you are in the wrong place.


There will be several folders in here. The ones you want are your "Saves" and "Tray" folders. And maybe your "Screenshots" and "Recorded Videos" folders. Saves are in Saves and saved sims and lots are in Tray (tray is a holdover from the days of Sims 2).