Who games on an External Hardrive?

[Venga]

Just out of curiosity, how many of you game on an external. My mate recommends it but are there any positives or negatives about it?

Im not using 500Gb of space just for back ups so realistically it would be more useful having a stash of games on there.

Just wanted to check with Bg's gamers.

[The Stig]

I do.

The only kick in the balls is if you're on a laptop and you need to move/go somewhere, you'll need to carry more.

If you know how to tinker with the registry, realistically you can keep games on it forever and just import the registry into your new machine and game "on" there.

I don't notice any drop in performance or anything too bad, I guess as long as it's firewire/USB2 it should realistically be fine. Some gamers may notice a slow down if there's a LOT of information needing to be accessed back and forth, but I personally haven't experienced any.

[Mayareira]

I always do, external drive is a must for my laptop(Empire TW + DA Origins take up to 50 gigs).

I did not notice any significant performance issues and like TheStig mentioned above the only issue is that you have to carry it with you.

Logitech has some good external drive carry cases.

[Venga]

Sweet cheers guys, gonna set it up now!

[Kaisha]

Seek time is usually slower on a USB-powered external drive/enclosure no? I would assume you'd have hiccups in performance on games that stream a lot of data in, versus a large level load screen.

[lilfoo]

I am all for it. I use one for when i go out with friends to cybercafes or the student computer gaming area. Hook it up and play any of my steam games w/o having to load anything on there PCs. Also it is generally a nice break from my PC when i do that kind of stuff.

[The Stig]

Seek time is usually slower on a USB-powered external drive/enclosure no? I would assume you'd have hiccups in performance on games that stream a lot of data in, versus a large level load screen.

Good point, all my external drives are 7200rpm and powered externally, not through USB, so this is something to take into account. I haven't tried USB Powered drives before.