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    Gaming via eSATA/USB M17x R3

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Shozuki, Aug 30, 2013.

  1. Shozuki

    Shozuki Notebook Consultant

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    Ok, so I was wondering...

    As I'm running out of space on my drive - I was wondering if the speeds of eSATA are fast enough to store a steam folder for example and use it to play games from?

    Is it much slower/takes up performance?

    I'm right in the thinking the R3 is USB 2.0 too right?

    Thanks in advance!
     
  2. bigtonyman

    bigtonyman Desktop Powa!!!

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    Your better off just buying a caddy to replace your optical drive with another 1tb Hard drive in my humble opinion, but thats just me.
     
  3. Shozuki

    Shozuki Notebook Consultant

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    Truth be told, I have a spare 1.5TB 2.5" SATA drive just sitting about, and thus with eSATA enclosures being really cheap, I wondered if making that a Steam drive would be a viable option...

    The 2 HDD slots on the laptop are already used y'see one SSD and one 1TB 2.5" drive...
     
  4. Meaker@Sager

    Meaker@Sager Company Representative

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    eSATA will be at full SATA II speeds so 270MB read/write max which is plenty.
     
    MogRules likes this.
  5. bigtonyman

    bigtonyman Desktop Powa!!!

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    Ah makes sense. I was just thinking if you wanted to avoid having to haul an external drive around, you could remove your optical drive and replace it with another hard drive. If you wanna go the Esata route just buy an enclosure with an esata connector and you should be good to go. :)

    Sent from my Nexus 7 (2013) using Tapatalk 4
     
  6. Alienware-L_Porras

    Alienware-L_Porras Company Representative

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    It'll be fine and will run the games without issues.
     
    reborn2003 likes this.