Gaming performance on an external HDD

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Guys,

Have you tried playing games directly from an external HDD on a PC - especially the latest more demanding titles? How do these run? Is the performance adequate?

If yes, which hard disks would you recommend?

I tried playing Dota 2 and CSGO a couple of years back. Even the game startup time is quite high and level loading times. Sometimes that used to fail altogether.

But once the loading is done, it wasn't the worst experience. There were peaks sure when the game would freeze but it was not completely unplayable.

However, these games the loading happens once and we're set for the entire match, games like GTA V where the loading is continuous probably won't be so smooth and better to use an internal disk.

Furthermore, external hard drives usually don't have that many read/write cycles on them compared to an internal one. This means they'll go bad quicker compared to their usual life time also.

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I won't suggest loading a game from any HDD, unless those are retro emulator games.

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So, I guess it's no go for HDDs. Any idea about SSDs?

I have run FIFA 19 & FarCry 5 from my ext HDD, loading times were much higher compared to laptop's SSD but it was working fine otherwise. Due to slow storage, usually initial load times get affected then sometimes you might get texture pop ups or loading assets while playing in big open area ( I saw loading screen on some open areas of Destiny 2 when it was running from my laptop's 5400RPM HDD, solved by shifting to SSD).

Ext SSD will be very expensive. But those are faster than HDDs, so should run everything fine.

DeadBoy said:
So, I guess it's no go for HDDs. Any idea about SSDs?

I won't recommended playing games from an external HDD/SSD as the device is connected via USB port and might face disconnection issue which could corrupt your game save file.

You never know when you have a faulty cable or Windows USB driver issue

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Zangetsu said:
I won't recommended playing games from an external HDD/SSD as the device is connected via USB port and might face disconnection issue which could corrupt your game save file.

You never know when you have a faulty cable or Windows USB driver issue

That makes sense but I've been using an external HDD with my PS4 for over a year and this hasn't happened yet. Again, that doesn't mean it can't happen.

DeadBoy said:
That makes sense but I've been using an external HDD with my PS4 for over a year and this hasn't happened yet. Again, that doesn't mean it can't happen.

Be specific in OP. I thought you want to pair the external HDD/SSD with PC. You never mentioned before its PS4 you are connecting with.

With PS4 you can try the external HDD. But performance won't be that good and they are not designed to be used as external gaming device for playing.
Upgrade the HDD of the PS4 to larger size 2TB may be that would be a better option.

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Zangetsu said:
Be specific in OP. I thought you want to pair the external HDD/SSD with PC. You never mentioned before its PS4 you are connecting with.

With PS4 you can try the external HDD. But performance won't be that good and they are not designed to be used as external gaming device for playing.
Upgrade the HDD of the PS4 to larger size 2TB may be that would be a better option.

My bad. My question was about using the HDD with PC. I was just saying that I've been using an external HDD with my PS4 and it works quite well except maybe longer loading times.

DeadBoy said:
My bad. My question was about using the HDD with PC. I was just saying that I've been using an external HDD with my PS4 and it works quite well except maybe longer loading times.

Then my reply on post#6 is the one.