Gaming on USB 3.0 Flash Drive?

Since my laptop SSD is running out of space, would it be possible to play games like Bioshock Infinite on a USB 3.0 flash drive (assuming I have a USB 3.0 port)? I've been googling this for a bit and can't find a conclusive answer. What kind of transfer speeds are needed for gaming?

Edit: Did a bit more research, and found that typical HDD real world speeds are 50-150mb/s, while USB3.0 running on a regular HDD will give you maybe 40mb/s that can double if running on a SSD. Is this correct? Is this even a good idea (will it tax my laptop too heavily?)

 

I've bought myself recently a portable external Western Digital 2TB My Passport Hard Drive, which of course supports UBS 3.0. As it's around 100mb/s I do have no problems playing Games from the external drive. Of course I keep the most important 10-20 Games on my Internal drive, but I have stored hundred Games on the External drive and do expect no problems. Normally if your flash drive is good enough, it should also work without problems.

 

You can run off USB 3.0 just fine. It may take longer to load levels than an internal drive.

 

I too run some games from an external drive, since i only have a 128gb ssd.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

I have limited space as well, so I can sympathize.

However, I've noticed that although a USB 3.0 cable can transfer data quickly, the read/write speed for a typical 5400RPM or 7200RPM drive is so much slower than SSD that it's more convenient to simply reduce the number of games installed on my primary drive at once. If you don't have a fast broadband connection at home, you may want to try backing up some of your games to the external drive and then restoring them when you want to play that game again.

There are only a couple of games I continue to play on a regular basis years after launch, or games with a lot of mods that would be a pain to reinstall. I keep these on my primary drive and the rest I uninstall and then reinstall whenever I want to play them again.

 

What kind of speeds do you guys get using your USB 3.0 drives (flash or external hdd)?

What do you guys think about this one (Patriot Memory Supersonic Flash 32GB)? http://www.amazon.com/Patriot-Memory-Supersonic-Flash-PEF32GSRUSB

Also, would this be too taxing on my CPU/laptop hardware?

 

I get around 100mb/s on external HDD 7200 RPM

 

My Seagate Barracuda XT 3tb 7200rpm gets around 140mb/s write on USB 3.0 according to the disk benchmark in Dxtory.
I use it for storage when i record gameplay since the codec i use is pretty hard on HDDs but the end result is worth it.

 

Technically, a regular drive on USB3.0 should perform close to a regular hard drive. A flash drive, not so much, there are some higher quality flash drives that are rather fast, but even your standard USB 3.0 flash drive is usually slower than a mechanical drive.

Left: SSD on USB 3.0, Right: Mushkin Ventura Pro 64 GB, Bottom: 500 GB 7200 RPM drive on USB 3.0

 

I used to do that with my external usb 2.0 drive, worked flawlessly

 

I thought a flash drive is faster than regular HDDs since it's flash memory?

 

I install all my steam games on an 1tb external WD passport usb 3.0 drive. Works flawlessly.

 

Depends on the game, I will be really annoyed if I have to play skyrim /dragon age type of game off a HDD.

 

They usually have lower quality NAND and can easily end up being slower. The 64 GB Ventura Pro I showed is a higher end model and those are considered good speeds, a Kingston HyperX flash drive is going to be faster, but also more expensive and we're already taking close to 1$/GB for the Ventura Pro.

Here's a 32 GB Ventura (not Pro). If you go for a flash drive, you're going to end up paying a tidy sum for not that much capacity if you want HDD comparable speeds.