Change Data Folder

[imported_tickstoryParticipant March 9, 2015 at 10:43 am Post count: 1479]

#20601

Hi Trader2384,

Unfortunately a single MT4 installation allows you to use a single data folder location. This means to achieve what you want you would firstly need to install multiple copies of MT4, each with it’s own data. As for Tickstory, it currently only allows a single MT4 installation to be defined at the moment which means you will need to change it when you change back-testing terminals. Multiple terminal support is a feature we are working on.

Hope this helps.

[Trader2384Participant March 9, 2015 at 12:00 pm Post count: 75]

#20602

ok, I understand that a single MT4 installation allows you to use a single data folder location but what I am wondering is how mt4 knows where to look for the data folder, in other words where is the path C:UsersUsernameAppDataRoamingMetaQuotesTerminalD9CB00435C7F0D694E302C2AB3887B0D stored such that I can change the 24-alphanumeric directory name at the end to use a different one instead?

For example let’s say I have these 3 directories set up in Terminal for different projects:
Terminalproject1
Terminalproject2
Terminalproject3

Is there a way to tell a single MT4 installation to read from project1 and then when I am done working on project1, tell MT4 to use project2 instead?

Or maybe having multiple installations is the easiest way for now until multi-terminal support becomes available?

[imported_tickstoryParticipant March 9, 2015 at 10:27 pm Post count: 1479]

#20603

Hi Trader2384,

In the MT4 Data Folder there is a file called ‘origin.txt’ which has the folder location of the MT4 installation directory.
If you’re not aware already, MT4 supports a ‘portable’ mode (specify /portable when launching your MT4 terminal). This mode uses the MT4 installation directory as the data directory as well. Perhaps this would be more suited to what you are trying to achieve.

Regards.

[Trader2384Participant March 10, 2015 at 7:00 am Post count: 75]

#20604

portable mode or even 1 mt4 installation per strategy will work but I was hoping to find how to update the data folder associated with mt4 such that I could just change the data folder path to have mt4 launch to a new directory. The origin.txt file has a reference back to the mt4 installation it is associated with but the question is how mt4 know in the first place to open that data folder and how can we tell it to open a different folder? Basically, the path in origin.txt is the path of the mt4 installation, what I’m looking for is where to find the path of the data folder that mt4 opens and change that.

[imported_tickstoryParticipant March 10, 2015 at 8:22 am Post count: 1479]

#20605

Hi Trader2384,

Here is some more information about how the MT4 works with it’s data folder:

https://www.mql5.com/en/articles/1388

As far as Tickstory works, it checks all directories in the ‘Roaming’ path to find the matching origin.txt.

Hope this helps.

[Trader2384Participant March 10, 2015 at 8:30 am Post count: 75]

#20606

great, thanks!

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