External Hard Drive Question

I thought I would ask this... I don't think it is a problem, but just in case...

I have a new computer, but the internal HDD memory in it is not that great... just 250Gb. A lot of the games nowadays require a lot of space, which means 250Gb can only go so far...

So I bought a 1Tb external HDD to store most of my files, to keep my internal one fairly empty. But now I'm thinking "hey, I have all this memory in my external HDD... maybe I could install games in my external HDD and keep my internal one really empty to hopefully keep my computer fast!"

But it came to my mind... what about the speed of transfer of data between the external HDD and my computer? Would that have an effect on this strategy? I'm guessing it will, but then again, it might be a negligible effect. Would the speed of transfer make this strategy impossible?


Sorry, I don't know much about hardware... I'm not a master nerd, I'm just a novice... don't go hard on me for that please...

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As long as your using usb 2.0, it shouldn't be a problem.

http://www.everythingusb.com/usb2/faq.htm#4

That's 480 Mbits/s or about 60Mbytes/s, apr. udma66. Well, subtracting overhead and the like call it udma33.
The biggest worry is drive "letter hopping". Fixable in linux, don't know if windoze has a solution, although from a clean boot your external drive should always come up the same letter.

 

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I concur with kevinalm. Unless the software you're using is writing significant data to the hard-drive (GIS Software, Modeling Software etc) you should see only slightly longer loading times and almost no change once loaded.

 

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Yeah - I added a second drive for more space to another machine a whiles back (XP OS) for just such purpose. Some stuff loaded just a tad slower, but NBD.

Going to get an external drive for backup on this (WIN 7) machine right quick here, next week when the stuff all goes on sale bigtime.

 

Playing games directly from an External Harddrive can obviously as mentioned suffer hang's due to the speed of transfer or down to the cables themselves if they get tugged about too much.

I'm not suggesting it's impossible to play games, just performance might suffer.

(A personal preference would be to have a RAID array with multiple drives linked together as it gives a greater transfer rate if done using RAID 0 or RAID 2, but obviously it's not configured for data integrity and currently isn't "External" unless you hav rigged a docking method.)

 

This has got to be a joke! You can install a shit load of stuff on 250GB internal HD it a DVD is only 4 GB man what is this a joke? You;'ll never run out of room on the internal hard disk unless you're downloading 1080p movies!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE TOTALLY NUTSSSSS 1TB hard drive for what? It's not going to matter if you install things to the external HD because once you need to reinstall Windows all that shit will need to be redone anyway! Don't even bother return the 1TB drive you'll thank me later

 

I agree with darksidzz, 1TB is massive (and from a news article I read, 10tb isn't to far in the future), if you really badly need the room after you fill the 250gb just get a 500gb and that will last until your next build (as long as you aren't cataloging your entire familys HD dvd collection.

 

250 Gb will fit about 25 or less modern games, and DVDs in ISO format are c.8Gb each, so it's fairly easy to fill a 250Gb HDD these days.

It's a tad harsh to criticise someone for buying kit when you have no real idea of what they might want to store on it... they may have a sizeable album collection they want to store at HQ for their home entertainment system, not to mention uncompressed DVDs they may want to stream etc.

And when you factor in that 1Tb are basically the same price as smaller drives these days... it's a tad of a no-brainer for me.

But then the OP did say he has already bought it, so criticising him and calling him nuts for doing so is quite simply rude. :/

 

I agree with Sarkus...just because you may not need the drive space doesn't mean someone else doesn't. I'm buying a new 1 TB drive this week to replace my 2x 500gb raid array..that's starting to go bad. I have over 650 gb of data on the array (mostly dvd movie rips) that I don't wish to lose. For only about 60-70 bucks...we're not talking about a lot of money.

 

Legally you can't rip your DVD's to your PC so lol But you can fit way more than 25 games on that 250GB drive don't pretend! I'm guessing 90 or so just try it. Hell you could buy Steam games and still never fill that drive!

 

Who are you? The DVD police? Why are you arguing about other peoples drive space needs? I just counted...and I have 22 games installed on my machine...for 192 gb...the largest being Star Wars: The force unleashed which takes up a whopping 25 gb by itself.

 

Download and run HD tune and see if drive achieves same results internal and external. If both drives are at the same RPM the larger drive may benefit from higher platter density.

My wow folder alone is 33GB, I think dragon age with all the DLC exceeded 40GB. Most good games appear to be over 10GB. Luckly 1.5tb WD greens are only 60$ but mines already half full of anime and documentaries after just 2 weeks.

SSD is the way to go for OS and games though

 

Rather depends in which country you live.
In some it is legal to copy / back-up DVDs for personal use, providing you use only one version at a time (i.e. don't distribute the original / copy).
In the US it actually is legal to rip DVDs for personal use... it is just still illegal to circumvent anti-piracy encryption... which most DVDs contain :/

You think Steam means never having to download the games to your HDD?
Download "Empire: Total War" from Steam and that's over 16Gb.
"Left for Dead / 2" are 12Gb between them.

Most newer games, in my experience, are c.6-8Gb - generally as much as they can fit on 1 DVD. But some are far larger.

 

Most new games these days come on 2 DVDs and are between 8GB and 20GB. This will go up over time. A 250GB HD will only actually give you about 212GB of space, and you'll notice performance issues with less than 50GB or 60GB left, maybe slightly more.
Games alone that's enough space for about 12 modern ones? Not including anything else you put on such as music, movies etc.
Unless you just do word processing you shouldn't buy anything less than 1TB, ideally 2TB now. As for advice, I'd pretty much say the same as the first few people.

 

I guess my final comment on this post will be get a 1.5 or 2 Tb hdd and a decent sized ssd and you'll be good for just about anything. Newegg.com usualy has good deals and there is also tigerdirect.com

 

I have done as stated, picked up a 1 T Seagate external drive, with installed backup software listed at $120 on sale last week for $70.

I have a significant amount of digital art, animation and photography software, libraries of documents and photographs as well as the usual small business stuff and games. A terabyte gives me some elbow room. These new large drives are simply marvelous.

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