Playing Games From External HD

You asked for it, Now you got it. Did you purchase an M11x and install an aftermarket SSD? Wonder what to do with the left over drive? Well, I made mine into an external USB hard drive. My drive shows to be a Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.b 160GB 5400rpm drive. So I purchased a case from Frys to mount it. Works great. I started the long task of installing all my favorite games on it, both dvd-rom based and steam.

Here are my findings so far...

GAMES LIST
DAWN OF WAR II - FPS decreased by over 50 percent due to throughput. My FPS AVG on SSD was 23-24fps. On external it is 11 fps. I will try it again tonight to double check.

Neverwinter Nights 2 (plus all the add ons and expansions)30-40fps. Smooth
Heroes Over Europe - 30-50fps Smooth (settings on high)
Blazing Angels 2 - 30-50 fps Smooth (settings on high)
Company Oh Heroes, Tales Of Valor - 30fps mostly smooth (settings on high)

Benched DAO and STALKER. DAO is playable. FPS as high as 27 and as low as 17.
STALKER - on medium settings is questionable. I may lower it to low and try but as of right now I am going to say NO on this title.



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Battlefield Bad Company 2 played really well from the external drive. The load times were slow but once in game it rocked!
I was really impressed since this game is very demanding...

Added Wings Or Prey Demo screenshots. I liked this one so much I went ahead and purchased a retail copy and installed on SSD. This game is outstanding... It plays well from external hd too.

I still need to benchmark ETW.

I will keep editing post to add games as they are tested. So far the smoothness seems to depend on cache size and how often data is pulled.

It is important to note that I have my external drive set to Performance not Portability in windows Device Settings. W7 is also set manually to 4gb page file.

Best Wishes,

StevenX

 

thanks for the info!

 

Does the M11x Support E-Sata? I bought an E-Sata enclosure for my system. Installed everything to it and everything runs as if it were on the main drive (non SSD).

If it doesn't support E-Sata thats unfortunate.

 

@hitokiri1:

No e-sata support directly through the M11x, you might want to get a converter

 

Fuzzy is correct.. No E-sata.. trust me I was bummed as well...

BW, StevenX

 

Bump... more to come.. BFBC2 next I believe

 

stevenxowens792,

Thanks for the tests. May I recommend replacing that first image &/or editing it to remove your contact information?

 

@TAZ - thanks sir! Done.