External Hard Drives for Games

HyperAquaBlast

So my 100gb hard drive on my laptop is pretty full and I have to keep juggling my game installs and other entertainment files. I have decided to get an external HD because if of this. Right now I'm looking at a 320gb Western Digital one on Newegg for about $124. My big question is are there any big cons to using an external to run game apps? And can I just drag and drop my existing install to the external once I get it or do I have to reinstall directly to the drive (also what about Steam)? Also they have a 500gb on for $169 and that seems like an awesome price but I'm building a new PC come fall and I can see this extrenal becoming useless to sorta since I like to have all my stuff in one spot but I cant decide.

khain

You can always get a normal hard drive and then just buy a external case for it. That way if you ever want to you can just put take it out of the enclosure and put it in your case. I'm not entirely sure what the normal speed for a ATA but I believe its 100 MB/s, USB 2.0 is 60 MB/s, Firewire is around 50 MB/s and SATA is about 150 MB/s or 300 MB/s. Any of these though should be fine for games, however USB 1.0 is limited to a max of 1.5 MB/s which may be to slow, but theoretically should work for most games though load times will most likely be longer.

DrFrylock

You will likely have to uninstall/reinstall your games. With steam, I believe there's an option to uninstall a game, and then you can probably install it somewhere else. Since the ability to play is bound to your account, you can uninstall/reinstall as many times as you want without penalty.

An external hard drive is probably going to be somewhat slower than a local one. If you don't have a high-speed port (USB 2.0 or firewire) I suggest dropping in a PCMCIA board for one of the two. USB 1.x is going to be pretty painfully slow compared to your local hard drive. Firewire may be marginally faster, but you'll find cheaper enclosures that have just USB 2.0.

Voro

Some games you could get by with a reg edit, but there will be games where you won't notice much by moving it onto an external drive. This is because companies are increasingly using the My Document folder to dump stuff, and you won't find an easy way of moving those onto removable storage. There's also the drive letter issue, which becomes a pain if you have any other external devices.

You really are better off moving your "other entertainment files" to the external drive and keeping the games on your main HD. Movies and music work much better with streaming the data, while the game might demand a gig or two transferred up front, plus more later. The performance will take a massive hit if it loads resources on the fly (like Sims 2 or Oblivion) rather than loading everything needed at the start of a level.

blanknogo

I use an external hard drive quite a bit (USB2) and it runs really good for watching videos, listening to music, etc. I haven't tried games on it, so I have no input there.

However, I imagine it might not be too bad, right? Going through USB would be slower than an internal, but your laptop drive should be 5400rpm vs. an external 3.5" which would be 7200rpm. I'm not exactly sure how it works out in the end though.

DrFrylock

On that note, here's a substantially good idea:

Most laptop drives, as pointed out above, aren't nearly as fast as desktop drives. Most are actually 4200RPM, some are 5400RPM, and a select few are 7200. Putting a 7200RPM drive as the primary disk in a laptop will up your overall computer speed CONSIDERABLY - like by 30-50% perceived performance. I replaced a stock Dell 4200RPM drive with a 7200RPM 100GB Seagate Momentus and the thing fucking HAULS. It's like I bought a new laptop. It's hella quieter too.

Consider this: go out and get a 100GB, 7200RPM laptop (2.5") drive from Seagate or Hitachi. Get an external 2.5" enclosure and put your existing drive in there. Put the 7200RPM drive in your laptop. Image-clone your old drive to your new one, and then format the old one. Then, you'll have a big speed boost in your laptop overall plus lots of space externally.

blanknogo

DrFrylock wrote:

On that note, here's a substantially good idea:

Most laptop drives, as pointed out above, aren't nearly as fast as desktop drives. Most are actually 4200RPM, some are 5400RPM, and a select few are 7200. Putting a 7200RPM drive as the primary disk in a laptop will up your overall computer speed CONSIDERABLY - like by 30-50% perceived performance. I replaced a stock Dell 4200RPM drive with a 7200RPM 100GB Seagate Momentus and the thing fucking HAULS. It's like I bought a new laptop. It's hella quieter too.

Consider this: go out and get a 100GB, 7200RPM laptop (2.5") drive from Seagate or Hitachi. Get an external 2.5" enclosure and put your existing drive in there. Put the 7200RPM drive in your laptop. Image-clone your old drive to your new one, and then format the old one. Then, you'll have a big speed boost in your laptop overall plus lots of space externally.

Wouldn't putting a 7200rpm into a laptop just generate lots of heat and drain the battery?

DrFrylock

blanknogo wrote:

Wouldn't putting a 7200rpm into a laptop just generate lots of heat and drain the battery?

Not really. It will generate some more heat and drain a little more battery (10%-20% perhaps, according to the linked data point), but the payoff in speed is substantial IMHO. Did I mention that the drive hauls balls?

robaal

USB2.0 and firewire 400 external drives get transfer rates of ~33MB/s, with firewire using less processing power.

Looking at DrFrylock's benchmarks it looks like that wouldn't be much slower than not-7200rpm laptop drives.

Internal SATA 3,5" drives can get transfer rates as high as 70MB/s for the beginning of the drive.


btw. external hard drives usually have only a 1y warranty, while internal ones have 3-5y ones; the cheaper 3,5" IDE enclosures with USB and FireWire seem to cost <$30 and a 320GB Seagate costs ~$95.

Food?

I have a 160 hard drive in an external enclosure, attached using Firewire. There's a noticeable difference when it comes to loading times in games, but it's nothing agonizing. Installing games with multiple discs took a lot longer than normal, but the loading time went up by less than 50%.

Edit: It varies greatly from game to game. Homeworld 2 loads just as fast, while loading new parts of levels in Half-Life 2 takes longer.