WTF is an mklink?

What is an mklink? I'm not going to write an irrelevant story, so I'll save you from the bullshit. An mklink is a symbolic link where you take something from one part of your computer, move it to another hard drive, but link it to the first one. Confused? It's hard to explain without pictures and examples, but in practice it will make more sense.

Here's an example, of what I use symbolic links for. In our modern day, at least in 2022, we have a serious space problem on our hard drives. Even though SSDs are faster than HDDs, they also contain less space to save files on. With games in our modern era, it is not surprising to see files that are over 50 gigs easily. Call of Duty Black OPS 3 requires 100gigs, as stated on steam. Mortal Kombat 11 is easily 80 gigs, on my husband's computer, it was over 100. Cyberpunk 2077 is 70 gig as stated on steam. With these huge as games, there's little space to place them all.

Personally, I use the symbolic links for my Sims games, stuffing all my mods on an external hard drive, to save as much space on my SSD as I can. Even though the Sims 2 Ultimate Collection is about 12 gigs, I have...seriousy...over 19 gigs of mods and custom content. 😬 I may have a problem, but this is how I play lol. A symbolic link is very useful in a scenario as the sims, where you have to have your mods folder in your documents folder on the C: drive. Without that folder there, none of your mods and custom content will work. That's just the way EA set up the games, Sims 2, or Sims 3 (if you have sims 4, this is probably the case too).

The problem with having multiple large programs on an SSD, plus certain games that need to be in specific folders, is that you lose space very fast (windows dumping all your stray data and temp data in the hidden temp files dont help either. If you are low on space, look at cleaning out your temp files. Seriously. I had 100gigs there.).

In 2021, I looked up if there was another way to store my mods folder, so that I could still use it in my game, but not take up so much space on my SSD. I was hoping that there was a solution to potentially be able to place the mods on my HDD, while keeping the smaller files in place. Symbolic links were my solution, as this ameliorated my problem.

To get to the point, the mod folder was placed from my C: drive, to an external hard drive. In order to get The Sims 2 to still recognize my mod folder, I used the 'mklink' command in windows cmd, with a symbolic link. It is called a symbolic link, in my words, because your computer "thinks" it's on the one hard drive, while actually existing on the other. It's as simple as that, and that explanation makes sense. While symbolic links and mklinks are rather unknown to the common person, they actually have a lot of use for more than the standard tech ideologies.

So how the funk do I do it?

There are multiple examples and instruction pages out there, though I feel like many of them barely make sense, or leave out certain details. Very few people in the sim community can seem to communicate accurately, and write instructions that make sense. I know that's harsh and arrogant, but I have spent so much wasted time trying to do something in someone's wiki or instruction file, just for their own documentation to be wrong. like wtf man 🤦‍♀️ I will provide pictures, because not only do I want this to help you, I am writing this to help me later. Sometimes I forget things, and need a refresher lol.

Here is the "hard" way, aka doing it manually, without an extension.

1. Move your mods folder wherever you want. I am moving my Sims 2 mods folder, which is called DOWNLOADS, to my D: drive, as it has a lot more space. I am putting my folder in another one created, with the title "MODS LEL". This isn't necessary, organization is just something I like. If I dont put the folder in another folder, then I would just have random "DOWNLOADS" folder with no other description. Hang with me, I know that made little sense.

2. delete the mods folder from the C: drive. Yes, seriously.

3. open up notepad or some other word processor thing. Just in case you mess up and need to edit this.

4. type in: mklink /D "C:\Users\User\Documents\EA Games\The Sims™ 2 Ultimate Collection\Downloads" "D:\The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection\MODS LEL\Downloads"

➡️ 4.1] To explain the syntax, we have the mklink /D, with "/D" standing for directory. There are other letters we can use, but I want to keep this simple for now. The first "address" is where we want our file to show up, symbolically. So, for me, I want to "trick" my computer into thinking that my mods folder will be in the Sims 2 ultimate collection folder, on my C: drive. The reason why we deleted the C: folder, is that the symbolic link cannot be created if the folder you want to exist, already does. Bear with me here.

➡️ 4.2] The first "address" is where we want the symbolic to go, and technically, be created. So we have to put the name of the folder/location we want it to be. It is important that we have QUOTATION MARKS. I see many guides talk about symbolic links, but look over this fact.

➡️ 4.3] The second "address" is where our mod folder actually goes. The D: is where my mod folder is actually located, and accessed.

➡️ 4.4] So, for reference, the formula we have is: mklink /D "location you want the folder to go" "location where it actually lives"
Think of it like a shell company that is avoiding the government. There are American companies that are based in the USA, but start fake ghost companies in Europe to act like it's not them, and avoid taxes through, and more than likely launder money in. It'd be like Walmart opening a shell company in France called Ballmart, and acting like it was a separate whole company, despite the fact that it was really them.

5. Open the command prompt AS ADMINISTRATOR. If you do not know how, press the windows key, and type in cmd. When it pops up, right click, and you will have the option to run the program as the administrator.

6. Type in the mklink that you created, or copy pasta it if you wrote it on notepad or something. Hit enter.

7. If done correctly, you should now have a symbolic link! Congraturations!

If you aren't sure that you made the link correctly, there will be a little arrow icon on your folder, indicating that it is symbolically linked.

Hope this helps!