USB Drive for Games?

Has anyone used a USB hard drive for installing and playing their games? Just wondering if it really kills performance in any way? Or if there's any tricks to improving performance? I'm considering using my WD Passport so the games won't suck up so much of my internal HDD space.

Games that I will put on it will be mainly RTS (C&C 3, Civ IV, CoH, etc) and Source (HL2, Portal, TF2, etc) games. But a few FPS like BF2, SWAT 4. I think BF2 would be best native on the internal HDD as that seems to need quite a bit of time to load levels as it is even with my desktop Raptor drive.

 

I mentioned before on another thread that I had NWN installed on my 160GB IDE 5400rpm hard drive. On my old laptop in my signature I had to tone down practically every setting and even then fps was in the single digits (USB 1.0 doesn't help).

Tried again on my sister's XPS M1210 and I could crank everything to max and have fps at 30+ average.

My take is that it depends on how new the game is and how much it thrashes the HDD when loading game features. Playing Oblivion for example on an external HDD is fairly pointless no matter how good your computer equipment is.

 

I had a Western digital 320GB FireWire external hard driver that I used to use.
Everything seemed to be just as fast, if not faster than my internal 5400rpm drive. fps was not affected in any way, and games loaded just as fast..

 

Thank your firewire interface for the loading speeds. Most USB 2.0 external 2.5" HDDs will struggle loading newer games off the interface.

 

... erm, well, your FireWire is faster... or far more faster than a usb, even 2.0.

Comparison

As for htwingnut, i doubt that will be a good idea to play games on a usb drive as even it dont kill your fps, it kill your loading time. Agree with Harleyquin07, games such as Oblivion which need to load as you enter another area will suffer a lot but i have no idea about rts nor fps.


My suggestion is go ahead and try it and measure "if" there's con, and if the con worth it.

 

so why not use a firewire one? here's the one I used to use.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136028

does the vostro not have a 1394 port?

 

Yes... that's your best bet if you desperately needed external drive for gaming but i never own drive equip with FireWire before so i can't really provide you info.

But the WD HDD looks pretty good in my opinion.

 

Most games just load everything at the start, a slower connection or slower hdd would increase load times but fps and performance will not be touched.

The exeption is if it has to page file alot because you do not have enough ram to hold all the game data, then it could potential studder or pause when loading textures. fps should still be un touched tho.

 

Vostros do have a 1394 port and I'm sure the firewire HDD is fantastic but didn't htwingnut specially request USB external HDDs on the topic title?

 

oh ok, didn't catch that you already own an external drive.. thought you were going to buy one..

 

I'd like to see more detailed numbers... Transferring files to my external HD (normal 5400RPM 2.5" drive I threw in a USB 2.0 enclosure) gets between 25-30 megabytes a second in transfer speeds...

Also the HD should only hit you in the loading and saving category as previously mentioned (depending on the amount of RAM you have, of course).

 

Wouldn't it pagefile to the internal HDD?

 

Yes! pagefile can be st up on any drive, and if your running windows off of the internal drive, it uses that by default.

 

Thanks. It's too big. The small passport's are ideal for carrying in my bag, and don't require an extra power connector.

 

I run several games (Guild Wars, Rome Total War, Battlefield 2142) off a WD MyBook 320 GB, 7200 rpm, USB 2.0 external hard drive. The loading times are not noticeably affected either way by running them off of that. I would advise though that if you want to run games off of an external hard drive, create an NTSF junction point pointing from some folder on the C drive to your external drive. That way you will have a minimal chance of compatibility problems because as far as the game knows, it is running on the C drive.

 

Sorry, but huh? How do you do that? (create a junction point that is)

Also, does it matter if its on C drive or not? I run my games off a separate partition with different drive letter than C with no issues for years. Unless the exteranal drive is the issue?

 

I play WoW off of my 160GB WD My Book HDD, along with Civ 4: Beyond the Sword. Absolutely no game performance problems to speak of, always runs smooth. Loading times are pretty good as well. Especially for a game like WoW, where you have huge open areas that need to be loaded, very quick. Gaming off a USB 2.0 external HDD is defenitly something that can be done with negative affect to your gaming experience. I actually see none in the games that I play.

 

Now what about frying your USB port if the HDD is USB powered?

 

Dont know about that...my HDD has a plug that directly goes into the wall, so it revieves no USB power. But I dont know how it would fair if you were to game of a portable, USB powered HDD. If the drive dosent mean much to you, I guess I would give it a shot...but im not saying it wont do anything bad, but then again im not saying it will either.

 

So if I wanted to run a game (Bioshock, pro exempla) w/ an external HD on USB 2.0, I could do it w/out damaging my USB port?

Looking for ways to save my HD!

 

I've decided to play it safe and order one of these:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/accessories.asp?ProdID=170

 

Yes...I play WoW all the time from my external USB 2.0 HDD...everything is fine, no problems.