So, I have a question about external hardrives

from Sins Forums
I was wondering if i can load Sins on an external hardrive, and then play it?
technical
5,502 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I'm not a dev, but I see no reason why you couldn't. Just change the location at time of installation. Keep in mind, you'll probably see a performance hit. USB drives are typically slower than internal ATA or SATA drives.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Yes, you can do this. I have Sins running off an external 500 GB IEEE 1394 (firewire) drive. I have noticed no performance hit. However, if you use USB you might notice a small performance hit because of the differences between USB and IEEE 1394 (firewire). My laptop's primary Windows drive isn't big enough to accommodate all my games so everything is stored on that external drive unless it's essential to work and productivity.
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I don't run sins off an external but I do run the witcher off of a usb external and have virtually no framerate issues.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I dont love or hate external drives but when it comes to games I rather not risk performance on my PC personally and the potential of knocking over the hardrive too, but to each his own.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Should be no troubles if you have a decent amount of memory. Once the game is loaded, it should stay in memory anyways and shouldn't go out to the hard drive for anything. It should only affect your loading time.

FYI, unlike IDEs, SATA has a specification for external drives, and some motherboards have external connectors for connecting external SATAs. It's just not very common to see them.

But yes, it should work, I don't see why there should be any troubles. Unless you unexpectedly disconnect or bump the drive.