Gaming External Drive

Hi! I know games can be played off an external drive, but I've never tried it. Will I notice a drastic difference between an esata and usb 2.0 drive? Also, what do you all use that you recommend?

I've been looking at Seagate FreeAgent drives and some of the Lacies as well. Any help would be appreciated!

 

I've never tried it, but I can't say that I'd recommend it. USB 2.0 supports read/write up to 480MB/s, and tends to fluctuate greatly through transfers. SATA II is 3.0GB/s and is much more consistent. In order to play a game off of a drive you are going to have to have consistent performance. With games installed on an external drive I would imagine that load times would be pretty bad. Like I said though, I haven't tried it, this is just my initial thought on the idea.

 

So, do you think I'd be better off keeping games onboard and just offloading music/video/documents to an external drive?

 

thats what i do

 

i run quite a few games off external hard drives (western digital 160,500 gb 7200 rpm) oblivion, crysis, dreamfall etc
load times are normal performance is the same as on my internal drive, usb 2.0 btw

 

Especially on Vista u forget external HD gaming...it ll royally screw up your experience

 

I would not recommend using a USB external drive for gaming. Unless you are currently using an nother ATA 100-133 drive the USB will be a bottleneck. Go for ESATA (External SATA), its spec is 3Gbps, USB 2 maxes at 320Mbps.

That is 3 Giga-bits per second versus 320 Mega-bits per second. That is quite a difference. A lazy way to convert from Mbps (Mega bits) to MBps (Mega Bytes) is just move the decimal place forward.

3Gbps = 3000Mbps ~ 300MBps
320Mbps ~ 32 MBps

So if your game loads a 500 mega byte level, you wait about 1.5 seconds for eSATA, or around 15 seconds for USB 2.

The numbers speak for themselves, and eSATA may actually be cheaper since SATA disks are the bread and butter of systems now. eSATA enclosures are not too expensive either. You just need an eSATA port, which can be bought to fit in an ExpressCard slot for laptops.

Don't quote the numbers, they are just ballpark estimates, the actual transfer rates will vary, but given the advantage I seriously doubt USB2 or Firewire2 will ever be faster.

 

Do note that a computer game loads most of its data on boot up. Although there are games that load data during gameplay, those loading times will not differ too significantly whether you are using an internal or external HD. For example on HL2, it takes me a good minute or so to actually boot up the game from Steam off my external. However, the in game checkpoint loading screens only appear for a few short seconds.

 

I game sometimes off a 80GB Maxtor external HDD which has a older 5400rpm HDD. It`s a little slower than my internal SATA 7200rpm HDD but other than that it works well and i find it faster sharing files at small lan`s with it too. Not only that some models be purchased quite cheaply since they are on the old HDD interface model that the newer laptops don`t use.

Not a bad idea either if you have run out of internal HDD space as games nowadays take up 10GB of space. Game installations seem to be ok as long as the same drive letter is assigned to the USB HDD every time you plug it in.

 

Same as above, games on a usb drive (or any applications really) will be pretty slow to load and cause all sorts of problems. I find the best thing to do is keep applications that never or rarely change on the internal hard disk, then put media files/downloads etc. on an external.

 

An esata drive should load as quickly as your internal drive, even a usb2 external hard drive might load as quickly if your internal hard drive is very fragmented. But I agree with the others, just move your music and video etc. over to your external drive, but games will run just fine off an external drive.

 

Great, thanks for all the help guys! I really appreciate it! I'll pick up a FreeAgent when I get my laptop. Those seem to have really good prices for their sizes. I am going to get Vista (I know... I'm hoping SP1 will fix all the issues. Worst case I will have to downgrade.

 

I have freeagent pro 500GB, 7200 rpm, USB 2.0 (still no esata on my notebook unfortunately), and I can say that Crysis loads much faster from it than from my internal drive. HD tach reports 32 MB/s on average (burst speed on internal is 109, and external only 33 - clearly limited by the external USB controller). It is practically the same as my 5400 disk inside. Now I guess that the inside disk does more Vista traffic too while loading Crysis and that is why an external disk helps a lot. Internal disk serving Vista, and external loading Crysis. I have 2GB ram, and once the crysis is up and running, the differences are less obvious in the next level load, but the first load is definitely faster from the external disk.

So I would say external disks are ok for gaming.

Esata interface removes that USB limits (usually bad controller limits) and I actually expect that external Esata disks show more performance in games than internal drives. It is simply leaving the main disk to do the Windows stuff, while being at the same or higher transfer speeds for the game itself.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

I have a FreeAgent 500 GB too, works great for archiving, compared to my internal SATA disk it makes everything seem very slow.

 

I was about to order my FreeAgent but I started to take notice of all the reviews saying they were DOA. Others complained that certain connectors did not work (in some cases Firewire, in others the ESATA). Has anyone here encountered these issues? Just wondering if it was an isolated problem or widespread.

Also, are the Western Digital MyBook external drives pretty reliable? I saw that I could get a 1TB drive for roughly the same price as the FreeAgent with the same connections. Are these more suited for storage over streaming video/playing games?

Thanks for any help. Just want to make sure I get something reliable that won't kill my framerates.

 

Why would you want to do this in the first place? If you are doing it because you low on disk space, then you should just get an external and transfer your files to it, or upgrade your HD and put the old one in an external case.

 

Why not get an external bay with eSATA port? Then you can put any SATA drive in there. Probably end up cheaper too.

I'd get something like this.

 

I have a FreeAgent 250GB 7200RPM external drive. Right now, I only use it for backups, but with all the latest updates from MS, I've gotten fairly good transfer speeds.

 

I'm getting a new Alienware in the next couple of weeks with a 200gb hdd. I don't want to fill it up immediately so I figured I'd get an external drive to put most of my files and games on. Especially with more recent games taking up a lot of HDD space.

Thanks! I really like the look of that one! Seems like it would be easy to travel with as well. I followed the links to a site called performance-pcs.com where it is listed for $49.99. Is this site reputable? I'd never heard of it before.

They have some nice enclosures there.

 

If you're looking for something with portability there's this - uses 2.5" notebook HDD instead of 3.5".

Vantec makes good enclosures too , probably not as feature rich as AC Ryan. I'm using one with a Seagate 7200rpm drive in it , very reliable so far and they're easily available at most retailers.

 

Only problem with that would be the lower amount of space. The max I could get would be 200gb at 7200 rpm.

 

yup if portability isn't an issue 3.5" hd all the way, they're so cheap now and comes in high capacities.

 

I have about 200 Gigabytes worth of games on an external drives...considering they would never be able to fit on the 160GB hard drive in my MBP.

I use an eSATA express card from Rosewill to connect to an external drive.

I would recommend using the Antec Veris MX-1 external enclosure. It keeps the drive really cool with the fan. If you are not into the 50+ USD price then there are plenty of other enclosures out there.

Otherwise, I bought a Seagate ES.2 (second revision 7200.11 server drive) with 320GB of space and installed it in there.

Games on that external drive load in a little over 1/2 of the time they did when they were on my notebook hard drive.

USB might slow you down, but an eSATA external will most likely improve performance in your games by allowing your internal drive to deal with just the OS and native processes.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

 

I'd say my price limit is probably about $300 total. So $50-70 for the enclosure isn't bad. Just need to find a good hdd with a large capacity.

 

I'm a Seagate fan myself.

Hit up NewEgg and look at 7200.11 drives.

Here is one for about 200 bucks that holds 750 GB of data.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148298

500 GB for about 120 dollars.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148288

 

I would get an ExpressCard eSATA connector $30-50 (I assume you have an express slot), and get a 3.5" SATA drive 500GB can be had for around $100 usually, and get an eSATA enclosure which can be had for around $30-50 dollars ( read the reviews to cheap ones can be lemons).

Bingo:
$40 - connector
$100 - drive
$35 - enclosure
$15 - Shipping
Total = $200 and you have a pretty solid setup for large storage, and the connectors usually have 2 slots, so for ~$150 more you can add more space.

 

Great! I'll look everything over and pick out something nice. The best part about the computer is a built in eSATA port so I save money by not having to buy an expansion card for it

Thanks for the help!

 

Yeah, I was thinking going down the eSATA (in particular the Antec MX-1 enclosure) & a 750GB WD drive as an external gaming / storage. Was hoping that ppl have had experience with this gaming solution as my Asus G1s 160GB HD would be filled up pretty fast with so many games. I tend to play several games at the same time, and each game takes 4-5GB.

I definitely think with a fast large SATA HD coupled eSATA would load games much faster than a 5400rpm smaller notebook drive. And yeah, and since I tend to multitask, it would allow the OS to deal other processes in the meantime.

BTW, any1 have any issues with performance using the eSATA port on the Asus G1s?

 

Dude I will be honest with you right now. Do not waste your time trying to play off an external drive. The only game which I have got to sucessfully play using a variety of different computers is Condition Zero. I have tried C&C Generals Zero hour and COD4 and they will not work on other computers. The reason for this is when you install the game some of the files interact with the registry. When you try to play on another computer the registry files cannot be found or are incompatible. In the event that you do want to go ahead and try if your are using firewire or usb 2.0 connection you will need a 7200 rpm drive. I am unfamiliar with the new sata connections they have for connecting externals but they should be much faster and you could get away with 5400. However, most computers you will plan on using your external drive will not have the new sata connection. I wish you the best of luck.

 

I got something like that, but it requires 3 USB ports to operate, unless you get an external adapter, of which I cannot find one.

That being said, I have a WD Passport 120 and 160GB HDD. They are 5400RPM and USB 2.0 and run games fine off them. Probably similar speed to the internal, but that's not too bad to begin with. Not its not my zippy 150GB Raptor in my desktop but it loads quickly nevertheless.

 

This doesn't present a problem as long as you intend to install and play the game on a single computer. The OP is not trying to play games off of an external drive and public computers, he just wants to install games on an external hard drive to save space on his laptop hard drive.

To reiterate, I use an external drive for 90% of my games and it works beautifully.

One word of caution: When you put the drive into the Veris MX-1, follow the directions carefully or read the review on Bjorn3d.com for advice. Just be delicate with the parts, they don't need much force. Also, the step which requires you to disconnect the small pin connector leading to the LED is not really necessary. As long as you are careful, I'd skip this step as it adds complication to the process.

Also, hold the drive in place with your free hand when you flip the enclosure over to place in the final screws, otherwise you'll put an extreme amount of stress on the logic board...dangerous. Always support that drive with your hand until it is screwed into place.

And finally, make sure that you are careful with the power connector. If you jerk it out too many times it WILL break. If there is a single weak point in the MX-1 design, it is the lack of regidity in the power connector. You'll notice a tiny bit of floppyness when it is connected, you'll see what I mean.

Otherwise, I still believe this is the best external 3.5in drive enclosure I have used. It keeps my drives working longer and I like how subdued the led activity light is, my only complaint is that the power connecter isn't firm enough in the power port. Some people don't like how dim the blue LED is, but I see virtually no reason to make it brighter.

Good luck! PM if you need any advice.