Are external HD good for gaming???

Sorry if these question seems stupid, but I was wondering if running games from an external HD (7,200 rpm) unit will hamper my gaming experience?

Or games should only be executed form the internal HD?

 

I think the only difference will be the loading times. it may/may not have an affect on actual in game experience. also depending on if the external hard drive is usb powered or it plugs into the wall. usb powered=not good for gaming as it will not be as fast, even if it was 7200 rpm

 

As above, the ones that plug into the wall will be faster. as will e-sata over usb ones.

 

that makes sense

 

Has anybody try this before??? I rather not upgrade my current HDD because form what I gather the max I can get is an 200GB HD and im thinking on geting an external HD with at least 500GB and want to play my games from there... I just dont want to buy it only to find out that games run too slow from it.

 

is it for your laptop?

 

yep thats why the 200 GB barrier. Currently I have 120 GB and can eiter upgrade to a 200 gb internal HD or buy a 500Gb external HD (probably a segate)

I rather have the extra space but dont want my gaming to suffer...

 

that means you can't go e-sata. but a firewire one would be up to standards.

 

Ok thanks lordgoof the segate Im eyeing has firewire =)

 

Running games off an external is fine. I currently do that all the time since I have switched over to OS X. Running games like Guild Wars and CS:S (Steam) off external has an unnoticable performance penalty, especially if your system is fast (7600GT in SLi for example).

 

Thanks Budding mi system is not that hardcore but Im still able to play most games at medium settings (8600gt)

Thanks everybody for your responses

 

I ran Quake 4 off an external hard drive and it ran fine.

Personally, I'd like to have games on my hard drive, but from what I saw with Quake 4 you should be good.

 

internal vs. external is not the issue. It's the interface you're using.

USB 2.0 external hard drive is going to be terribly slow. USB is not a good interface for bulk data transfer. You'll get around 25 MB/s at most, going down hill, with a tail-wind.

IEEE1394a (FireWire 400) is much better. It is designed specifically for bulk data transfer and shares many protocol similarities with SCSI. Many professional audio/video hardware is firewire only (no usb) for just this reason. With an external 1394a hard drive, expect around 36 MB/s.

IEEE1394b (FireWire 800) is where it's at. Same as 1394a but 1394b is twice as fast, at 800 Mbits.. Expect 70 - 75 MB/s real world performance for an external 1394b drive. Very fast interface and your best option, you won't be able to tell the difference between this and your internal system HDD! Any new hard drive cannot deliver more than 75 MB/s average anyways, so a faster interface like eSATA offers no performance advantages.

eSATA is the new player. 300 MB/s SATA on an external connection. More bandwidth than 1394b but not much hardware that supports it yet, still too new.

 

Wow lupin, very informative thanks, ill try to get a firewire one then

 

Just make sure your laptop has a firewire port on it, (some do not), and you'll be all set.

 

Hey lupin can you suggest a good e-sata external hard drive or enclosure? I would prefer 2.5".

 

first question, what sort of internal interface do you want? sata, ide or both.

 

I don't know of any eSATA enclosures for 2.5" drives. Haven't seen any yet. Plenty out there for 3.5" drives. I don't want to make any recommendations since I've never used one myself - all my external drives are FireWire. A quick google search turned up a bunch of eSATA options so give that a try...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817113031 this one looks alright. have a look at some reviews.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, there seems to be one from Vantec that is pretty good.

 

do you have a hard drive already, or will you buy one especially?