Game's on an external HD - Possible?

Hey guys, I have read up a lot about being able to put games on an external USB HD, and playing the game without sacrificing your C: drive space.

Is this even possible?

And if so, how is it done?


I would think it is not, because of the transfer rate through the USB.


I am wondering because I am running very low on HD space, due to all my games I have installed.

Thanks.

 

well, there's a video on youtube, playing WoW on his Eee, and has the whole game on a usb (i think)

 

if you have an esata connection/drive all this can become much less painful.

all said, possible it is.

 

If you can force the game to load textures and such into RAM, it would work a lot better.

 

You can do this by changing where the game installs during the install process. Usually to do this you would have to go to advanced setting while installing but some games let you choose; just change the install path to a folder in your drive and it installs there instead of your C: drive.

I've done this with a lot of older games like AoE and the older C&C's which aren't very stressing so I don't know what would happen if you try to play Crysis on an external. I did it all with USB interface so it should work; don't be afraid to ask if im not very clear (never did seem to wake up today )

 

You could get an esata external drive instead, same transfer speed as your normal HD.

 

what about off a FW800 5400rpm 500gb 2.5" external, would that be faster/slower than an internal 160gb 5400rpm 2.5" drive?

 

All depends how the hard drive is hooked up, USB and Firewire being slowest at ~35 mb/s and e-sata being at regular hdd speeds, I would go with E-Sata. All depends on what your laptop has for connections.

 

look at this might be helpfull

or just google mbp e-sata you'll find all you need

 

hi m8 ,i run all my games off my exturnal hdd via usb,even crysis and steam games,so u should have no issues.I use the short cuts on the hdd to play.I have even used another computer

 

I ve played GTA San Andreas and some NFS's on External HDD.

the initial loading takes some more time but gameplay not a big issue.

not sure about these new High def games though..coz they need much higher transfer rate

 

I tried Crysis like this and had some issues on my USB external.

I recommend e-Sata also...

 

Well it is possible with USB, I even installed Crysis on my external to test and it runs fine. Loading does take longer though but you don't need to kill yourself over an eSATA drive if you cant get one.

 

I have a 500gb external HD & I currently play all my latest games off it, currently playing off it, Dead Space, Tomb Raider:Underworld, Red Alert 3, COD4, Crysis, & Steam (all the games on it too). It has no effect on the framerate or performance of the games whatsoever & I've never noticed a difference in loading times when I've installed the same game on my external had drive & computer hard drive, believe me I've counted how long it loads for Crysis on PC & external hard drive, definitely the same amount of time.

And to install games on external hard drives when it gives you the option in the installation you just browse for a folder you want to install too, though if it doesn't give you the option to change the destination folder just choose Custom installation at the beginning of the installation, I always choose custon anyway.

 

Already summed up pretty well here. eSata is awesome if you have it, but you can run nearly all games off USB or Firewire fine. Few games go to disk that often, if you have one that does, then move it back. You can even run games off a USB key, now that they have the capacity, but a drive is usually a better choice.

Best advice - just try it and see for yourself!

 

Steam is installed on my F: drive (my WD Passport 500GB USB drive), so all my Steam games (Half-Life 2, TF2, Left 4 Dead, Sam & Max, Sacred, Silverfall, etc) run off the external USB drive...

I also run a plethora of other games from the USB drive including Crysis, Crysis: Warhead, Dead Space, Oblivion and Fallout 3...maybe slightly longer loading times...don't know...never compared them...

I did have some really bad sound stuttering on Crysis: Warhead so I tried it on my internal drive and it didn't do any better there...a forum member provided me with a custom autoexec file, and it runs like a charm from the external HDD...

I took a slightly different approach from other people...I put older games that are easily played with the keyboard and touchpad on my internal drive...games that are better with a three button mouse or a gamepad go on my external HDD...gaming on the go without having to attach the USB HDD...and when I'm at home, I plug in the drive...

One other thing...I extract the icons from the game executables and put them on my internal drive, and then have the shortcut use the icon on the internal drive...that way, when the USB HDD is removed, all my shortcuts still look pretty...yep, I'm that uptight...

In my opinion, you don't need an eSATA drive...it would be faster, but you don't need one...

 

What I didn't know you could run games off an external hd via usb!!! I have a 500gig and on my laptop its only at 4gigs left. But my HD does run pretty hot, will it matter in performance and do you guys think it will corrupt my hd or crash it if?


My specs:
2.0ghz AMD Turion
x1600 ATI
1gig ram

 

Now that's the way to do it! I had not thought of the icon bit, but now that you mention it, I dig it! I'm like you, I keep a few ez games internal, rest external (though I don't travel much these days).

 

I did the same thing and am shocked I never thought about putting games on mine before. Now I just have to sit through the installing process again, but it is worth it.

And ya, I am the same. I like having all my game icons nice and pretty in my Objectdock, lol.

 

Guys check this out:
http://usb.brando.com.hk/prod_detail.php?prod_id=00739

I think this might be a better route for playing games on an external HD. It is a cooling pad that has a port to fit a hard drive in it, I didn't know they make such a thing and its cheap too!

 

Modern USB 2.0 Drives are fast enough to be used as gaming drives no sweat, just as long as you have a fairly decent Dual Core processor.

My entire Steam/games library exists on an external eSATA drive connected through an expresscard slot on my Macbook Pro. Works like a charm, I've tried it through USB as well, and it is nothing to sneeze at.

Most external drives hover around the 80 Megabyte per second read/write rate anyway, USB 2.0 maxes out around 60 Megabytes per second, so there isn't quite as big a bottleneck as some people would think.

That said, if you can get eSATA, go for eSATA, but don't be afraid of USB2.0, it works just fine.

 

Looks interesting, though I'm not so sure I like the way the HDD just sticks out the back like that. It is pretty cheap.

 

Does an eSATA port contain power for the device (like USB power) or does it require external power supply?

 

Agreed. Great idea, why not? But I don't like that the HDD sticks out either. Seems like they could at least have it recessed 90% in, if not 100% with an eject button or something.

 

eSATA requires an additional power supply.

 

So perhaps that is a good reason NOT to use an eSATA drive. The convenience of USB HDD's is that they work without the need for one.

Do any eSATA drives use a USB port to power the drive at all? Or do all require wall outlet power?

I have used a USB HDD for launching games on my Eee (now replaced by an N10J so no reason), but Steam does NOT work on any external drive for some reason.

 

If you initially installed Steam to an internal drive, you will have to go into your registry and manually edit some Steam settings. There's a helpful how-to-guide on the Steam Support page.

Moving Steam from my C: drive to my external F: drive was painful.

 

Back up your Steam games and then just uninstall Steam and install it on the new drive, restore your backed up games and you're good to go.

 

Ok I just play some Crysis on my external and it works perfect or even better when I had it on my HD. Now im thinking I should do this for most of my games since im running out of room. I have one question, is there anyway to have a particular steam game go into the external? I have Prey but I wanted in the external any ideas?

 

I'm not aware of any way to split your Steam games...as far as I know, all Steam games have to go on the drive where Steam is installed.

I thought about doing that, but after the Steam move from internal to external wore me out, I didn't have any more patience to extensively fish around for solutions.

It may be possible (if you can get System Shock 2 to run under XP and a Duo Processor then running Steam games from two separate drives should be do-able), but not easy.