Running games off an external HDD

[JellyWorld]

Will there be a significant delay in loading times or any performance hit if I install and run games off a USB hard disk? Right now I have a 300GB HDD that's rotting away in my cupboard because I can't be arsed to install it, so I was thinking of using it as an external.

 

[Barney Fife]

Jelly, you have to know external HDs aren't made for the hard work internal drives suppose to put up with, and may fail from time to time, and since they're enclosed they will also heat up pretty fast, and are much slower than internal HDs, since they contact MB through Cable (Much slower than internal HD data cables), through USB, and through HD software driver by way of OS.
The original concept was to create an external HD so people would store valuable files they afraid to loose and to carry data from server to server and bring presentation, since CDs are very small in capacity and loose data after long period of time, unlike external HD.

So give that HD a break and use it as a backup drive.

I have 120GB External Maxtor that sits next to my system and its only turned on when I want to save a file I want to create backup for. The rest of the time its turned off and collects dust.

Good Luck.

 

[-Psy-]

External HD for games? D:

They use USB and Firewire, so the transfer rates are nothing compared to SATA drives...

I believe SATA drives are cheaper aswell?

 

[JellyWorld]

The way my comp internals are arranged I have to unscrew the floppy and CD drive to put the hard disk it :x Maybe I'll try installing a couple of games and benchmarking the load times. My friends run GTA on school computers off an external HDD all the time and I've never seen any slowdown, but I guess it doesn't use the HDD so much.

 

[Beerdude26]

I've played Icewind Dale, F.E.A.R. and Oblivion on my external HDD. Smooth as silk mind you

 

[Asus]

Most games load at the begining of the game/level. It will be slower. Now if the game has to load something while playing then it would be a nice delay. Just don't expect the games to run on any computer you plug it into (the registry entry was on the original machine you installed the game on).