I was recently reading an article talking about how The Sims on console will get worse because you can't upgrade a console with a solid state drive (SSD's) like you can a PC. The author said they had upgraded their PC with an SSD and it only took them one minute to load their game.

I'm currently at 10+ minutes to load my game despite having tons of hard drive space on my PC. So I was wondering if anyone had any experience with getting an SSD and it improving their game.

I was also wondering, if you do have an SSD, do you have to move your Sims game to the SSD? And how do you do that?

Thanks for any and all help. I'd really love to improve my game if I can.

I'm playing sims 4 with SSD drive, and while having (currently) 26,8GB of custom content, my game loads up to the start menu in less than 5 minutes. It takes a while to load my played household, but I think it's related to latest updates, because before it was loading up much faster.

Thanks, that's very helpful. Do you have to install your game on the SSD? How do you do that?

I and many others use the SSD as a socalled boot unit, meaning you have windows on that and all your programs. The regular old one can have documents, pictures etc. The SSD has a shorter lifespan than the HDD, I think they are also more expensive.

You have Origin probably. Just uninstall your game and reinstall it on the new unit. If you don't make it your main unit or boot, you just have to choose where you want your game to be installed. Your documents folder can be easily moved I think, but I don't remember how. If you now have it on your HDD, perhaps you can just keep it there.

I wouldn't worry at all about the shorter lifespan of an SSD, because you most likely upgrade it to a larger capacity and faster one long before then anyway.

After installing the hardware, you can setup the new SSD by giving it a drive name allocation. A letter like C drive, but whatever you desire. Thereafter, when using the likes of Origin to install, you can direct it to the new SSD directory.

It is very important that you make your own folder in the SSD drive called Origin Games. Where Origin does this automatically when installing to a HDD, as it knows to go into the Program Files (86) folder on C drive, you won't have that folder on your SSD, so Origin is baffled where to go. Origin will tell you that it needs a folder to be installed in, but does not tell you what you should name that folder. You may be tempted to make a folder named TS4, or some such. Bad move. You must name it Origin Games, or the game will never load after install.

When right clicking on Documents folder and selecting Properties, you should then see a few header tabs. One will be named Location. Selecting that gives you the option to enter a different drive location to move the Documents folder to. After it's been moved, it will always be available to revert the process and send it back to C drive should you have second thoughts.

A very helpful tactic to also have the benefits of an SSD load up a big collection of mods and CC much faster. Though depending on the max capacity of the SSD, you might have to consider how much space will be available over the long term if you intend to add more Sims 4 packs vs many growing GBs of CC.

And as Volvenom pointed out, they do have a shorter lifespan than hard drives. This is primarily weakened by the comings and goings, the adding and deleting of files. The more you do that, the quicker its life diminishes. So be mindful if you intend to regularly add a truck load of CC and remove it, over and over, as the SSD will feel it and weaken more than a HDD would.

To give you an idea, I have all TS4 packs up to Discover University, - have bought nothing since - and it comes in at about 44GB. Then there's 21GB of mods and CC. I know that would all be a real drag to load up on a HDD. But on the SSD, it takes about three minutes to get to main screen if it's first time loading game after booting up the machine, (Repeat game quitting and reloading thereafter - the pains of modding and testing - comes in at about 90 seconds to reach main screen.) and round about two minutes to load up last save to the neighborhood screen. (Very busy world by the way with nearly 700 sims, so I count that as pretty damn fast with all that needing loading.) Then depending on the size of the lot and family I next choose to play, it varies. Maybe two minutes, maybe four or five. But by that stage I don't think the SSD has any say in the matter.

And finally, when actually in game and in live mode, the SSD has absolutely no effect on the processing of things. All up to your CPU, Graphics Card and RAM at that stage.

Thank you all so much. This has been supremely helpful!
And coolspear1 that was exactly the information I needed. I really appreciate your help!!!

One more thing that Coolspear1 didn't mention. Don't buy an external SSD. Try to get one you can install inside your computer. I purchased an external unit, and traveled with my computer to another county. When I got to my destination, I didn't use the unit, but when I got back home, I tried plugging it in, and found that the plugin port on the unit was seriously damaged. Hence, there went all my files and data - and no way to access them. I believe the Customs people did it, maybe trying to see what I had on the disc, but of course I can not prove that.

In any case, good luck to ya.

Generally, there will be a utility available with your SSD which gives you some control over how that memory is managed. Reserving 10% of the total SSD space will provide for additional sectors of storage space which can then substitute for a bad sector. In addition, SSD's should generally not exceed ~70-80% of total storage space in use. So for a 100GB SSD, 10% might be in reserve for bad sector replacement, and 70% of that maximum storage, so in all, 63% would be as far as I would fill one, SSDs from Samsung come with all the utility software you need to manage this. Theoretically an SSD has a shorter half life than an HDD, but that has dramatically improved, and companies like Samsung offer 3 year warranties on them.

I would also almost always make the SSD the c drive (unless you already have an SSD c drive and are simply adding another for additional storage). Windows (or whatever OS you prefer) boots far faster than from an HDD. I average maybe 10-15 seconds for a full boot up. Leaving your programs on the SSD also speeds things up, not just the Sims. If your machine allows for (say in a laptop) you can still have a D drive HDD for backups, photos, videos, etc to avoid filling up the SSD. You can also create shortcuts (joins) to redirect a c drive program to the D drive if you want but you lose the fast load times.