SSD/HDD

[Glockwyrks]

I'm not entirely sure which category to post this in, but I figured as it most involves gaming here would be a good start?

My SSD seems to be overflowing with OS and general rubbish, I only currently have an internal HDD.

I'm looking at grabbing an external drive, I assume SSD will out perform the HDD but I intend to use it as my main STEAM library. I've read there was some issues doing this unless STEAM itself is installed on the same drive as your library, but does anyone have any advice for or against this?

And what particular drives I should be looking for , solely for this purpose.

 

[BeardyHat]

Steam will be fine with games installed to a secondary disk. I do this myself in two of my systems at home.

That said, I'd advice against an external HDD; you're already taking a pretty substantial performance hit by loading from an HDD (My desktop loads games installed on its HDD significantly more slowly than my laptop with the same game loaded on my NVMe) and it's only going to be worse over an external USB connection.

Assuming you're using a desktop, there's really no reason not to choose an internal drive. It'll be both faster and cheaper. No particular suggestions on brand; couldn't even tell you what brand I have in my various computers.

 

[Pifanjr]

Steam will be fine with games installed to a secondary disk. I do this myself in two of my systems at home.

I haven't had any issues with installing games on multiple disks either.

 

[Colif]

I've read there was some issues doing this unless STEAM itself is installed on the same drive as your library, but does anyone have any advice for or against this?

none of my games are installed on the same drive as Steam, that isn't a problem. I have used another drive for games for as long as I can remember. Used to make recovering from a fresh install of windows faster, no need to download the games again.

Considering you can move steam folders between PC, this isn't a problem

Can I store steam games on external hard drive? :: Help and Tips

steamcommunity.com

My SSD seems to be overflowing with OS and general rubbish, I only currently have an internal HDD.

what size is the current hdd? I would think about replacing it instead of using external

Looking at posts you made, you have a Desktop PC so the idea of adding another internal is a good one too. Unless motherboard or case is lacking.

load times will be slower on an external drive

And what particular drives I should be looking for , solely for this purpose.

normally I would say an ssd or nvme but storage prices are silly right now.
My track record with external hdd dying isn't great. But internal drives, I would pick Western Digital or Seagate

Ideal situation is pick up an external drive enclosure and buy a drive yourself. As a lot of the ones for sale may promise to be much bigger than they really are.

Info Thread 'Beware of 16tb External SSD or 8tb USB Flash drives.'

Aug 6, 2022

You currently cannot buy a real 16tb or larger external SSD or USB drives larger than 1tb, at all. They don't exist.

But if you look on almost any retailer now they show you drives that are labelled 16tb, or 30tb or bigger still. These are fake.

Same applies for any USB flash drive bigger than 4tb, they don't exist.

Almost all 8tb, or 16tb external ssd on the market now actually have sd cards in them. The memory controller in the sd card has been reprogrammed to tell any device its attached to that its got 16tb of space. It doesn't, in many cases its less than 60gb. Once you write more...

• Colif
• Replies: 9
• Forum: Desktop Hardware

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thread showing age, can get 1.5tb sd cards now. Not sure about Flash drives. Samsung stopped a lot smaller. I wonder if they moved onto making fake ram as that is where money would be now... although when 4tb ssd cost over 1k here, maybe not.