Anybody playing FPS games on an External HD?

[PW]

Am just about out of space on my game drive. Sure, I could delete
some I haven't played in a while but most of them don't have that
option in Add/Remove Programs in Windows XP. Or I could take it to
town and have somebody clone my D drive and put the contents on a new
Terrabyte drive. But, I could use another backup external drive. I
am looking at one of the new TB ones (probably Seagate). It would be
a USB2.0 drive.

How is the performance on playing games (action, simulations, rpgs) on
them. Any ideas?

Thanks!

-pw

[Andrew]

On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:07:55 -0700, PW
<emailad...@ifIremember.com> wrote:

>How is the performance on playing games (action, simulations, rpgs) on
>them. Any ideas?

They are ok, but are obviously slower than an internal drive. Previous
to my hardware upgrade for Windows 7 I had my Steam games running from
my 1TB Seagate external and they worked fine, my main gripe is that it
shuts itself down when not in use which is a nice feature, but it
takes about 10 seconds to come back to life which can be annoying.
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[PW]

On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:43:04 +0000, Andrew <spam...@127.0.0.1> wrote:

>On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:07:55 -0700, PW
><emailad...@ifIremember.com> wrote:
>
>>How is the performance on playing games (action, simulations, rpgs) on
>>them. Any ideas?
>
>They are ok, but are obviously slower than an internal drive. Previous
>to my hardware upgrade for Windows 7 I had my Steam games running from
>my 1TB Seagate external and they worked fine, my main gripe is that it
>shuts itself down when not in use which is a nice feature, but it
>takes about 10 seconds to come back to life which can be annoying.

Thanks Andrew. I realize they are slower but besides your problem
with it shutting down, did you actually notice a performance hit in
games?

I should find an old game and install it on my Seagate and see how it
runs.

-paulw

[Andrew]

On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:18:37 -0700, PW
<emailad...@ifIremember.com> wrote:

>Thanks Andrew. I realize they are slower but besides your problem
>with it shutting down, did you actually notice a performance hit in
>games?

Nothing major.

[PW]

On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:10:31 +0000, Andrew <spam...@127.0.0.1> wrote:

>On Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:18:37 -0700, PW
><emailad...@ifIremember.com> wrote:
>
>>Thanks Andrew. I realize they are slower but besides your problem
>>with it shutting down, did you actually notice a performance hit in
>>games?
>
>Nothing major.

Thanks Andrew. I just ordered a 1 "Western Digital Elements 1 TB USB
2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive WDE1UBK10000N (Black)"
Electronics; $99.99

Could not determine the cache size (hope it's bigger than 8, 16 or 32)
but probably not. Needed another backup drive any way. I won't put
L4D 2 on it but am curious how it would run any way.

-paul

[Elmer Fudd]

Andrew wrote:

> They are ok, but are obviously slower than an internal drive. Previous
> to my hardware upgrade for Windows 7 I had my Steam games running from
> my 1TB Seagate external and they worked fine, my main gripe is that it
> shuts itself down when not in use which is a nice feature, but it
> takes about 10 seconds to come back to life which can be annoying.

Go to device manager and go to the USB devices section and change the
power option not to shut down this device.

[Andrew]

On Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:38:04 -0800, Elmer Fudd <e...@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

I don't use it for games any more as I got a bigger internal drive. I
actually like the auto power down feature for what I use it for
mostly, it is just a pain for games sometimes.