Run Origin from External

[Riverleigh]

Howdy

I have the unfortunate problem of a nearly full hard drive and no money to upgrade at the moment, so I was wondering if it's actually possible to move Origin to an External Hard Drive and run my games from there? I tried to just move the whole Origin folder over, but then none of the games would run at all, so I'm thinking that wasn't the way to do it.

Can anyone give me some (easy) guide on how to do this please?

Thank you!

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Riverleigh  Origin itself is quite small—a few hundred MB—and generally works better if it's on an internal hard drive.  So there's not much point in trying to move it elsewhere.  Please move the Origin folder back to where you found it, and see whether Origin and your games work.

If not, use these guides to clearing Origin's cache and uninstalling it "the hard way" to remove all related files from your computer, then download a fresh copy of Origin and install it.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/clear-cache-to-fix-problems-with-your-games/

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/manually-uninstalling-origin/

Your games can be moved to an external drive, but once again simply moving the folders won't work.  Instead, let Origin do the work: open your game library, right-click on a game, select "Move Game," and choose a destination folder on your external.  You do need to make a folder into which the games will be moved, e.g. External Drive Games, rather than picking the "root folder" (the base folder of the drive itself) as the destination.

[puzzlezaddict · Accepted solution]

@Riverleigh  Origin itself is quite small—a few hundred MB—and generally works better if it's on an internal hard drive.  So there's not much point in trying to move it elsewhere.  Please move the Origin folder back to where you found it, and see whether Origin and your games work.

If not, use these guides to clearing Origin's cache and uninstalling it "the hard way" to remove all related files from your computer, then download a fresh copy of Origin and install it.

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/clear-cache-to-fix-problems-with-your-games/

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/origin/origin/manually-uninstalling-origin/

Your games can be moved to an external drive, but once again simply moving the folders won't work.  Instead, let Origin do the work: open your game library, right-click on a game, select "Move Game," and choose a destination folder on your external.  You do need to make a folder into which the games will be moved, e.g. External Drive Games, rather than picking the "root folder" (the base folder of the drive itself) as the destination.

[Riverleigh]

My Hard drive and I thank you! That worked a treat