Best way to shift install onto another drive?

[CameronMcDonald]

So a fresh install of A2 and OA followed by an overwrite of the new Arma2 installation with my old one should work without registry fiddling?

I take absolutely no responsibility for the hair you may lose, but I believe that's correct. Good luck!

[Nicholas]

Honestly, a fresh install would probably be the easiest.

[tpw]

I take absolutely no responsibility for the hair you may lose, but I believe that's correct. Good luck!

Hair already gone mate! But any I had would have fallen out after messing around til 2am trying to get it to work.

In the end, the way I got it to all happen was:

1 - Reinstall A2 and CO to my new computer's HD (for the correct registry keys)
2 - Reinstall BAF and PMC (for the registry keys for decryption)
3 - Overwrite the whole thing with the Arma 2 directory from my old computer (containing all mods, update and betas)

Then to move the installation around on the same computer it was just a matter of changing the paths in the registry

Windows 7
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bohemia Interactive Studio\Arma 2
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bohemia Interactive Studio\Arma 2 OA
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bohemia Interactive Studio\Arma 2 BAF
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bohemia Interactive Studio\Arma 2 PMC

XP
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Bohemia Interactive Studio\Arma 2
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Bohemia Interactive Studio\Arma 2 OA
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Bohemia Interactive Studio\Arma 2 BAF
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Bohemia Interactive Studio\Arma 2 PMC

I easily moved it onto an SSD in this manner.

So the moral of the story is: registry fiddling if you want to move an installation to a different place on the same computer, reinstall + overwrite if you want to move it to a different computer.

[Leon86]

you can just copy the AddOns folders (also from folders expansion and dlc's) to the ssd and then run it as a mod. That way basically everything is accessed from the ssd.

Gets you the performance of an ssd install without having to reinstall.

[ChrisB]

I have all my mods stored on a 1TB HDD, so they are accessed from there, seems to work a treat, saves a lot of space on my a2 pc as I have around 400 mods or so inc islands (around 200 running inc islands, 150ish with the arma/ofp islands).

[Placebo]

What about using symbolic link creator? http://code.google.com/p/symlinker/

I recently bought an SSD which is C: and has windows on it, Arma2 is in G:\Games\ArmA II I want to move the Arma2 folder to C: so it's on the SSD and do the following:

1. Create a folder C:\ArmA II
2. Move the contents of G:\Games\ArmA II to C:\ArmA II
3. Create a symbolic link as in the image below


Now the game should run from the new fast SSD on C: but Windows/Registry etc sees G:\Games\ArmA II so the install isn't affected and I don't need to reinstall/reactivate etc.

Edit: Just tried that and it seems to work fine, but the launch shortcuts disappeared so maybe it's better to do step 3 before step 2?