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    External eSata Drive for gaming

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by a7x2thedeath, Jul 27, 2008.

  1. a7x2thedeath

    a7x2thedeath Notebook Consultant

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    Hi all, I am getting sick of loading in last with my slow 5400 rpm Hitachi drive. I was looking for an external drive to use on my laptop for gaming purposes like Battlefield 2. I was thinking of getting something with 7200rpm+. Money is an issue, so I would like something cheap but powerful. I was looking at this as a solution. I could take apart my laptop, and take out the second hard drive and replace that with an internal one, but I think external would be easier. Any solutions would be nice.
     
    a7x2thedeath, Jul 27, 2008
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  2. flipfire

    flipfire Moderately Boss

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    The BF2 spawn lag/issue isnt caused by the HDD, its by the graphic settings.
     
    flipfire, Jul 27, 2008
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  3. a7x2thedeath

    a7x2thedeath Notebook Consultant

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    No, I dont mean spawn lag, I mean loading the maps. Loading Highway Tampa can take me anywhere from 2 - 5 mins. Would buying 4gb of ram instead of the hard drive be a smarter thing to do, even though I only have 32bit vista, I know it will say is has 3 gigs of ram, but doesnt it use all 4?
     
    a7x2thedeath, Jul 27, 2008
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  4. mattbieg892

    mattbieg892 Notebook Geek

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    In theory, yes, since a 32-bit processor can address 2^32 memory addresses which equals 4GB. However, you have to reserve some addresses for your IO devices like Keyboard, Mouse, USB Ports, etc so it realistically comes down to ~ 3.2GB.
     
    mattbieg892, Jul 27, 2008
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  5. powerpack

    powerpack Notebook Prophet

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    Why don't you run HDTach or HDTune so we can see just how bad your HDD is and get a better Idea of what improvements you might see?

    You are loading maps from HDD not CD?
     
    powerpack, Jul 27, 2008
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  6. a7x2thedeath

    a7x2thedeath Notebook Consultant

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    OK, ran HDTach, and will post results below:

    Random Access Time: 17.4ms
    CPU Utilization: 0%
    Average Read: 34.6 mbps
     
    a7x2thedeath, Jul 27, 2008
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  7. powerpack

    powerpack Notebook Prophet

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    I have some concerns as to how much performance new HDD will get you.
    Let's say you get a 200GB @7200 HDD say it reads 48MB/s vs 34.6. All else being equal that 5 minute load goes down to say 3min 30s? Your current drive in theory can read 10380MB's in that 5 minutes? Far more than the map size? Before I spent money on a new HDD that may not help or only modestly. Try disabling readyboost? Is write behind caching enabled?
     
    powerpack, Jul 27, 2008
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  8. a7x2thedeath

    a7x2thedeath Notebook Consultant

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    Umm, you think readyboost might be a problem? I will try that after, my loading times got better after I increased the virtual memory paging file. I was thinking of getting a 2gb ram stick for 3gb total memory. Right now I have to fix my overheating problem.
     
    a7x2thedeath, Jul 27, 2008
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  9. flipfire

    flipfire Moderately Boss

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    Yes i meant loading lag at the start. You dont need to fix the overheating problem, that comes standard with the G1s

    Drop your gfx settings to low-medium.
     
    flipfire, Jul 27, 2008
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