External hard drives questions

[woodsman30]

Just as topic states has anyone used these for their games and game play? If so how well does it work? Any recommendations for brand? Thinking about 8-10 terabytes for size should be enough?

[Canaduh]

Most of my steam games, besides a few online multi games are on a 5tb seagate external. Seagate are also the hard drives used in xboxes, so you can probably rely on them.

[karatemann]

Look for your bottleneck, if you are using USB check the port version of "both" your usb-port and your ext. HDD. Don´t use something below Version 3. (you can search for the speed of usb versions in google). See for the maximal transferrate of the ext. HDD you want to buy. If you want to play some games with more than 100´s of GB i would buy internal storage (maybe a ssd or nvme) because most games uses data streaming for assets and loading time, maybe the texture is ploping up later, loading took longer, asset browser stutters etc.

[Varithina]

Would depend on which games, if you are thinking thinks like cyberpunk or starfield you may have issues with them, if however you are talking about older games then some will work fine others will not, about the only thing you could do is try, I used to have no problems running heavily modded versions of Skyrim SE and Fallout 4 off of a standard HDD, now neither of them like it, no idea why they are just very very slow to load or do anything on them, so transferred them onto one of the two SSD I have in my new machines and both still are slowish to do things but at least do not take 3-4 minutes to get to the load/save screens from start up.  From what I am aware the new update for Cyberpunk actually changes the requirements of the game to a ssd, it would not surprise me to see future games do the same.

 

One thing however is it might be worth looking at fire wire rather than usb, as from what I am aware fire wire was developed specifically for the transfer of large amounts of data, though it is not something you hear much about now, not too sure if that is because it is now more of a business side of things or because it has fallen to the wayside.

 

Depending on the situation, I would look at your pc case, and if possible fit an internal drive rather than an external.

 

Other option of course would be to transfer stuff you only access now and then onto the external, music, videos and such like that, to free up space on the internal drive.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Varithina
Spelling.

[AKM]

Got a Seagate and a Western Digital, both are 2TB.  Haven't had problems with running games off of either.  Currently using the older Seagate for my dedicated Steam/Digital Combat Simulator drive.  Runs Steam fine, but doesn't like DCS for some reason; can't get it to run at all, and I have yet to track down the culprit.  DCS worked fine on my internal 500GB drive with the OS on it.  Might be the USB connection as mentioned above.

Having done some futzing around with it, I imported my internal drive install onto the Seagate, and deleted it off the internal drive.  It's running fine now.  Must have been a target error the first time - pointing to the wrong place.

Edited September 13, 2023 by AKM

[woodsman30]

On 9/12/2023 at 10:46 AM, Varithina said:

Depending on the situation, I would look at your pc case,

I have 2 tb in the PC just thinking outside the box ...bad pun I know

 

[Varithina]

31 minutes ago, woodsman30 said:

I have 2 tb in the PC just thinking outside the box ...bad pun I know

 

 

I did have another though about an in effect external, a one or two bay network attached storage, transfer rates are much better than usb, as they plug into your router, and any pc on your network would be able to access them as well, though to be honest NAS enclosures can be a bit on the expensive side, and that is just for the enclosure they can get really expensive when you start adding drives.

 

True though externals are quite useful, but I would tend to use them more for moving stuff I do not use often off the main drive, and maybe running older games that do not require too much data transferring around, and use the internal one for the main stuff, that requires decent transfer rates.

 

Hmm, depending on what you are trying to do, you might want to look at usb memory sticks, they can go up to about 2tb now a days, and are not too expensive, and as a bonus have no moving parts, you could in effect move some of your games to run off one or more of them.  Though look at the quality and reputation as there are some garbage ones of them around.  Hmm, just had a rummage on the uk amazon site and the biggest they seem to do is 1tb, which is a bit odd, as I am sure I got my four pack of 2tb ones from there, though I guess not, so no idea where I got mine from.

[zapotek2034]

As an alternative to a standalone NAS enclosure if you have an old desktop it might be worth repurposing it, or picking up an inexpensive desktop that has capacity for a few internal drive bays and use something like TrueNAS (https://www.truenas.com/).

 

I've seen a few other discussions about using a Raspberry Pi in place of the desktop to help reduce some of the costs.  The Raspberry Pi site provides some details to start.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/tutorials/nas-box-raspberry-pi-tutorial/

 

[woodsman30]

21 hours ago, Varithina said:

did have another though

Thought of those memory sticks might look into it. Went with a new PC and not sure I want to clog up this one like I did the last one.?

[Varithina]

49 minutes ago, woodsman30 said:

Thought of those memory sticks might look into it. Went with a new PC and not sure I want to clog up this one like I did the last one.?

 

You can clutter up your desk or drawers with memory sticks instead, though a docking station might work quite well, my mum uses one to switch between a couple of drives she has, one for pictures and the other for all her crafting stuff, they work pretty much the same as a external hard drive, but the drive can be removed, after un-docking it through windows that is, you then just power it down, pull the drive out, plug the new drive in, power it up and wham there you go new drive.

 

I have one of those but it is a pain to use as it takes up two usb ports, and as it is old transfer rates are not great, I have the older version of this https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-Bay-eSATA-SATA-Standalone-Black/dp/B005CQ12W2/ref=sr_1_41?crid=3113R0JICUKO4&keywords=startech%2Bhard%2Bdrive%2Bcaddy&qid=1694812456&refinements=p_89%3AStarTech.com&rnid=1632651031&s=computers&sprefix=%2Caps%2C100&sr=1-41&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.cc223b57-2b86-485c-a85e-6431c1f06c86&th=1

 

which was about £70 or so when I bought it, and does not have the digital display attached to it, but otherwise looks pretty much the same.

 

A couple more examples here, the cheapest I have seen was about £20 or so I think.

 

Spoiler

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cinolink-Rubber-Coating-Enclosures-Single/dp/B081GXTX2Y/ref=sr_1_31?keywords=usb%2Bhdd%2Bdocking%2Bstation&qid=1694812057&s=computers&sr=1-31&th=1

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Connectland-GDPD05T-Docking-Station-Drive/dp/B0185RFLV2/ref=sr_1_32?keywords=usb+hdd+docking+station&qid=1694812057&s=computers&sr=1-32

 

Just had a though, if you have a few friends who are well into their tech, it might be worth asking them if they have one, and if you can borrow it to try out as you are thinking of buying one, they are pretty robust, so chances are they may well say yes, well unless they use it all the time themselves that is.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Varithina

[chooo]

You'd want an external solid state drive, not a mechanical hard drive. You can buy 1 and 2TB external solid state drives and even flash drives, you gotta be careful with low priced fake specced drives on amazon. You'd want USB 3.2 solid state

[woodsman30]

22 hours ago, Varithina said:

though a docking station might work quite well

That is an interesting idea I do have a few people I know who do IT will as about it.

 

16 hours ago, chooo said:

you gotta be careful with low priced fake specced drives on amazon

I hear you enter why I ask around before I buy and do a metric shit ton of research there is a lot of garbage out there.