Does an external optical drive decrease gaming performance?

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amea

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Aug 27, 2013
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Hi,

I recently purchased my first computer without an optical drive (lenovo Y580 ultrabay with fan). I have noticed that games that I download directly work fine, but games that I use an external optical drive (USB 2.0) tend to crash once in a while. This could be due to the fact the games I have on disc are old (>6 years) and there are compatibility problems with windows 8.

I was just wondering if an external optical drive can decrease the performance of games/ are there are any negative sides to using an external optical drive? Should I stick to digital downloads or are physical discs fine?


Thanks
 
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H
it doesnt matter mate pretty much every game has to be installed on to the hdd regardless if they are on disk or direct download. its not like a console which allows you to play some games directly off the disk.
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HEXiT

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Mar 13, 2011
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its unlikely as most games just check the protection when there run. some disk protection can interfear with your antivirus and this can often cause then not to run, but crashing after the game starts will often point to a bad install/ compatability issue or poor support by not installing the required support files such as direct x or vcredist versions.

check yyour event logs and the windows compatability wizard to see if you can glean any more info on the crashes.
 
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rvilkman

rvilkman

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Jun 12, 2009
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You generally still install the games on your hard drive, and more often than not you can do a full install so that it doesn't need anything from the CD or DVD, so it shouldn't cause any extra issues for those. But if there is some copy protection mechanism in play, it might have ill affects when used through USB, although pretty sure the incompatibilities are the more likely culprit for the crashes.
 
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A

amea

Honorable
Aug 27, 2013
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10,510
As I am using this computer mostly for gaming, do you think the external drive would slow games down significantly? Should I stick to digital downloads or does it not really matter? Most games do have copy-protection, so I am not sure if I can do a full install, as it still needs a way to check that you have a license?

thanks
 
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