Running Steam and some applications off External

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Prime42

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Nov 27, 2006
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Hi guys, tried doing some research and haven't found much yet.

But I have a laptop and it can only hold a single drive. I plan on upgrading my SSD in my main RIG this year and I'm thinking of putting my Intel X25 80GB in my laptop. This would be fine and probably would enough for my space needs. (music and movies can be put on an external) But I won't have enough room to install the amount of games I'd like to have. So I'm looking into a eSata or USB 3.0 Solution that should be able to handle Steam and hopefully no lag be found because of it. I'm thinking a USB powered External probably won't be good enough. My laptop has 4 USB 3.0 slots and an eSata, so either is fine.


Any ones thoughts on this?

Thanks
 
eSata would be fine, USB3 "should" but latency might become an issue unless the 4 ports are on a dedicated controller card not being handled by your CPU... I havent had the chance to play with any USB3 devices yet im itching to get my hands on an external USB3 drive and see how it pans out
 
I would spend a little more money and get a larger SSD bro. It's kind of a hassle to lug a portable HD with you wherever you go. An besides the larger capacity SSD's usually have faster read and write speeds to boot.
 
I would stick with a HDD in the laptop rather than run games and applications off an external drive. Just my opinion but aside from booting up/resuming from sleep, any speed/responsiveness gained by adding the SSD would be negated by running games off the external.
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You also may run into issues if you don't install the games (especiall with Steam) on your external from your laptop as there are registry entries that have to be made by the applications. If they aren't there, then the application may not start or will do a repair startup when you first execute the application. Also, your going to have to be aware of the drive letter assignment. If you do the original install and the external drive is seen as Drive F and the next time you plug your external in and its seen as drive E, your going to have the same potential issues.

As far as latency issues, I think USB3 or esata will be fine really with the only real downside for MOST games is the inital map or game loading since most of the needed information will be loaded into memory....unless the game your playing uses a load on demand kind of structure...then you MIGHT run into an issue....though I think ive seen USB3 being capable of matching mainstream SSD throughput speeds.
 
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