Downloaded Archives and Installed Mods

[MagnusThorek]

I have a question that I know part of the answer but it would be nice to confirm anyway.

 

With Mod Organizer, do I need to keep the archives downloaded from Nexus or other sites in the disk? Mods that offer multiple choices through a FOMOD installed I understand it's wise to keep, but mods like Interesting NPCs, Vilja, Conan (quest), Armort of Tamriel and so on are really big (600MB+).

 

So I would like to know if, for any reason, I need to format thoroughly my hard drive and I need to backup my stuff somewhere else (and for the scenario let's assume I wouldn't have a separate hard drive) if the packages files could be recreated from the extracted ones safely.

 

Sounds perfectly doable to me, but as always I like second opinions from the ones more experienced than me.

[EssArrBee]

The downloads and the mods are actually separate. Once you install a mod from archive the archive isn't needed anymore to run the game.

 

Go to the MO settings and tick the Advanced checkbox and then you can change where the mods and downloads are stored. It is usually better to keep the downloads off your main drive if it is an SSD since they have limited capacity. I keep everything but the downloads on my SSD.

 

If you are going to reformat a drive then it doesn't matter what you do now except that you need to back up all the data somewhere else, reformat the drive, and then move everything back. When you move MO back afterwards, you can leave the download folder where ever you please and then just put the correct path in the MO settings to save as much space as possible. Or you can just delete them and if you need to reinstall the mod for whatever reason you can redownload it. 

[MagnusThorek]

I don't need to format my hard drive, it was just an example. And re-download the big files is a big concern to me because, unfortunately, in my country, there are not enough law enforcement in order to guarantee Internet quality. And Nexus servers don't help either by aborting the connection every now and then.

 

The question was more to reaffirm the fact, you know. Is there an easy way to figure out if a mod has a FOMOD installer or it's only manually, faking an installation for every file?

Edited September 13, 2014 by MagnusThorek

[EssArrBee]

Oh... Use 7zip or winrar and open the archive. If it has fomod folder then it has an installer.

[Neovalen]

I always keep backups of any mod I use... In case it ever gets taken down.

[phazer11]

Yes. Backups. Even if the mod isn't down there are sometimes versions you want but are taken down y the author because they are too old.

[MagnusThorek]

Oh... Use 7zip or winrar and open the archive. If it has fomod folder then it has an installer.

That's what I did. I spent hours opening several different files. >.< 

And there were mods, like "Uncle Sheogorath" (it worth for some laughs) or Seranaholic (not that I'm using it right now), that had FOMOD, but when extracting them, not installer were shown.

 

I always keep backups of any mod I use... In case it ever gets taken down.

Yes. Backups. Even if the mod isn't down there are sometimes versions you want but are taken down y the author because they are too old.

That's what I used to do, but I noticed it was eating a lot of space very quickly. Interesting NPCs, for example, don't have FOMOD so it didn't make sense to keep both extracted and the packaged. Only with this mod I saved 2GB+ In the end, after all the removals, I freed up to 9GB of disk space. That's nice! And even if something explode in Nexus servers, thanks to Mod Organizer keeping mods separated it's just a matter of repack the mod folder again. And for mod versions, I think there are only three mods I keep backup: "Elysium Estate", "Gallery - A Collectors Mod" and SG Hair 268 (because it was too hard to download from a chinese page  )

Edited September 13, 2014 by MagnusThorek