External Hard Drive for Gaming

[HyruleHero97]

So, I am mostly new to pc gaming, played with it some years ago, and just recently getting into it, and there are several games I would like to buy on PC, but I do not have anywhere enough room, after I just bought some stuff on the Steam Sale, so I was wondering if I bought a 1 TB external drive, would that work well for games? I was wanting to get Halo Infinite but would the disconect from the computer cause issues on the MP side?

 

[Lew Zealand]

An external drive should work fine for Steam or any other game storage. All the major services allow you to add a new location or even move your entire game storage folder onto another drive. I do this on my main gaming PC as I have a fast drive for the OS and junk, and a slower one to store games on. Doesn't matter if it's external or not and for some setups (laptop with small drive), an external may be necessary.

One thing I don't know is if Steam will throw a hissy fit if you forget to connect the external game drive when you start Steam up. Probably just closing Steam, connect/turn on the drive, and reopen Steam will put it in a better mood. Or a foot rub. That works for me.

 

[imnvs]

External harddrives aren't quite as reliable as internal. I would suggest the external primarily be used for storage. Games that you intend to play should be on the internal, imho.

If you're running into storage issues on the internal, of course, find the games with the least amount of draw for putting on the external. Like, some high performance video gaming, definitely on the internal. Something like Stardew that doesn't have intense loading/saving going on all the time, that could be shifted to the external.

 

[dundalol]

For small games like stardew it can work ok, but for big games like Call of Duty, hitman, halo, etc, the external drive is very slow and the load times will kill you and maybe even affect game performance.
Why not add a second HDD to your PC? If its a laptop, some laptops have room for a second one. Or just replace your first one with a bigger one.

On a related note, an SSD will make everything so much faster in your pc if you can afford it.

 

[HyruleHero97]

For small games like stardew it can work ok, but for big games like Call of Duty, hitman, halo, etc, the external drive is very slow and the load times will kill you and maybe even affect game performance.
Why not add a second HDD to your PC? If its a laptop, some laptops have room for a second one. Or just replace your first one with a bigger one.

On a related note, an SSD will make everything so much faster in your pc if you can afford it.

Well, I really wanted it for games like Halo Infinite, and Lord of the Rings Online, I intend to build a Desktop around Aprilish, so I guess I'll just wait.