Steam games and an external hard Drive?

So my p-7811fx has about 14 gigs left, partly because of my massive steam apps folder and all of my games I have in it (steam sales are the best!). I combined both partitions so all the gigs are in the windows OS (C . An internal Hard drive is not an option for me simply because of my warranty, all my data that is in there, and all that transferring.

I need to know if my steam games can run well off of an external hard drive. Can you recommend any decent hard drives around the $70.00-$80.00 price range on amazon good for steam applications? Which would be my best bet: eSATA, USB 2.0, or FW800? I really need more space for my computer, just a hard drive for my Steam, because that is all that will be going into that hard drive. What do you recommend I do? Or is it not worth investing/idea into a ehd for steam games?

Thanks for the help...I know I am a nub

 

I'm curious -

why does an internal HD adversely effect one's warranty?

I would think an internal is the easiest and most efficient way to go for you. It wouldn't require any more file transferring than any of the other options as far as I know, and it is much easier to carry around since it is in the notebook (doh!).

I use Steam for Half-life 2, but installed the games off of purchased CD's (not downloaded installs). I know I can uninstall the game and keep the "saved" games and then install it again on a different drive and copy over the saved game info. I would think that would be what you might do if needed, isn't it?

 

there are two hds, which means u can have 1tb 500gbx2 space.
hard to believe thats not enough for games only.

 

Ok I have no idea what kind of internal hard drive I would need to buy, how to install it properly, and how to transfer my whole OS to another hard drive. It seems easier to put my steam apps onto my desktop, uninstall steam, install steam on to my external hd and move my steam apps folder to my new install directory.

 

I didn't look it up, but if your fx has an esata port then that is much faster then usb 2.0 up to 6 times faster. So like i said in the other thread you posted, my dad runs WoW off a usb hard drive and it runs pretty well. No lag at all. So he can take his games and things to work and home. If you want to transfer one HDD to another use carbon copy.

 

I've got to sign off for a bit and maybe can help you later, but -

I believe we have a thread that shows how to install an HD in these notebooks and also how to prepare/format it to be used by Win XP or Vista.

The physical installation of a second HD is very easy though. You wouldn't need to transfer your OS at all, simply use the second HD as "D" just as your current HD is "C".

You could take some time to read some of the threads here and you may come across the info you need. Otherwise, I'll try to find them for you when I get back if no one else does.

 

Good video of upgrading hard drive on the gateway FX series:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrMEUHw2ia4

 

Steam should work fine on an external drive, obviously get a fast drive. Mine has been on a different partition using MFT and it works great! You can simply COPY your entire C:\Steam or C:\Program Files\Steam or wherver depending on where you installed steam and PASTE what you just copied onto the external drive. Then simply run steam from that location. You will probably have to re-enter the password. EVERYTHING you need will be in the Steam folder if the games have been installed through steam.

 

What effect does the MFT have on the external?

 

MFT is software for solid state drives. Basically it teams up the ssd with the ram to deliver incredible speeds. The fastest I have ever seen steam run is on a SSD with MFT. It was a bit faster with MFT (Gotta love 4gb of 1066mhz ddr3).

 

So, where are you on this, Cheezburgerz?