Installing games on a external hdd ?

Renaldo Xhahu · May 21, 2015

I got a wd elements yesterday and i want to know if external hdd's are good to install games.

I've heard that installing games on another drive rather than the one you have installed windows makes them run faster, but i'm not sure if that applies to external ones as well...

So yeah, let me know down below

Boogieman_WD · May 21, 2015

Hey there, Renaldo.

Congrats on the new drive. You can install games on your external drive, but that is not really recommended. Portable HDDs are not meant to be used for that kind of purpose, which requires them to run for too long periods of time because overheating may slowly wear them out with time and cause problems. Nonetheless I've done this quite a few times and never had a single problem, but I feel obligated to point out the risks. Further more there's a chance that you won't be able to play those games on a different computer as most games have files on the computer such as: save games files, settings files etc.
About the games being slower when installed on the OS drive, that depends. If the drive has more work to do and it is being used by different background processes, this could indeed slow down loading time of your games and in-game loading screens, but overall it shouldn't affect your gaming experience that much. Note that the external drives' performance is also affected by the USB reading speed. The WD Elements is a USB 3.0 drive, but if it's connected to a 2.0 USB port, it would be bottlenecked by the older USB version.
So the bottom line is that it totally depends on your personal preference.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

DeathRabit · May 21, 2015

External driver are slower competed to internal hard drivers.
Any way not only loading times are longer, but also you can have FPS drops when HDD cannot catch up

Renaldo Xhahu · May 21, 2015

Boogieman_WD :

Hey there, Renaldo.

Congrats on the new drive. You can install games on your external drive, but that is not really recommended. Portable HDDs are not meant to be used for that kind of purpose, which requires them to run for too long periods of time because overheating may slowly wear them out with time and cause problems. Nonetheless I've done this quite a few times and never had a single problem, but I feel obligated to point out the risks. Further more there's a chance that you won't be able to play those games on a different computer as most games have files on the computer such as: save games files, settings files etc.
About the games being slower when installed on the OS drive, that depends. If the drive has more work to do and it is being used by different background processes, this could indeed slow down loading time of your games and in-game loading screens, but overall it shouldn't affect your gaming experience that much. Note that the external drives' performance is also affected by the USB reading speed. The WD Elements is a USB 3.0 drive, but if it's connected to a 2.0 USB port, it would be bottlenecked by the older USB version.
So the bottom line is that it totally depends on your personal preference.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

Thanks, that is very helpful...

Boogieman_WD · May 21, 2015

You are most welcome. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any other questions.

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Installing games on a external hdd ?

Renaldo Xhahu

Honorable

Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

Judicious

DeathRabit

Splendid

Renaldo Xhahu

Honorable

Boogieman_WD

Judicious

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