Extreme lag when trying to play games while downloading.

GameEtiquette

Reputable
Dec 11, 2014
12
0
4,520
Hello All,

Recently I've been basically unable to launch any programs on my USB 3.0 WD Elements external harddrive while I'm writing files (downloading at anywhere from 3 - 15 mb/s) to the drive. Anything I try to launch would do so extremely slowly, and games would pretty much not function. From what I know, this is not normal.

I've run Crystal Disk Mark a few times, and the sequential read/write is at around 90 mbps, while the random read/write is at about 0.5 mbps.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm strictly talking about reading media files and launching programs from the drive. Everything runs smoothly as long as I'm not downloading.

Does anyone know what the problem could be?
Thanks!
 

Lmah

Honorable
May 3, 2013
472
0
10,960
Sounds like you're downloading faster that it can write to the drive. USB isn't the best for small file transfers which is what it is doing while downloading game files. I would probably have the game download to a different drive (non-usb) if you have one available then transfer the files to the external drive afterwords if you would like.