Why cant games be stored and played off a external HD on PC?

My Xbox One can store games on a external hard drive and play then with no problems, why cant i store Steam games on a external hard drive on a PC and play them from the drive?

You can.

From the Steam app just go to Steam (top left corner) > Settings> Downloads> Steam Library Folders. At this point, select the drive you want to use and create a folder for it.

After this, whenever you are going to install a game, you can select to which HDD you'd like to install to.

You can, but why would you want to?

Loading times would be slower.

my entire steam library is on a 2tb external

this.. even USB 3.0 would cause slow downs when compared to a SATA connection.

I know some will do this with their STEAM library for backup purposes, if they have monthly bandwidth caps.

Heh. What led you to believe that?

Although it's not advisable since load times suck on external HDDs (or really any HDD for that matter, modern games should be on an SSD).

You can. I store all the games I'm not playing or have but don't wish to delete on an external but I think it shit the dust today which really sucks as i might have just lost a sizable collection. I often ran lesser demanding games off it and they all worked great.

Why can the Xbox one run games stored on a external HD with no problems but it becomes such a issue with PC? My SSD is small 250 gb and is running out of space. I ended up getting a 1tb internal hard drive for the extra space I needed, but it would have been much easier just to use a external HD. I posted this question earlier and was told NO, a external HD would not work. Thanks for the help, but the conflicting advice is giving me a head ache.

I'm pretty sure I was on the other thread an we clearly told you that you could but that it is better to use an internal HDD for better load times and no extra stutter on games that dynamically load from the HDD.

unless there's an issue with the drive itself, there are no issues with the setup. i don't fully grasp your situation though, wouldn't longer times be less of an inconvenience than plugging in an external HD?

you say you added an internal HD, so you must have space in your system for it. if that was the case, why would you bear the inconvenience of longer load times (from an external HD) when you always had the possibility of an internal HD?

it seems as though you are making things difficult for yourself because you won't to avoid adding an internal drive, but that is a good solution, if not the easiest.

@Kh1ndjal: well I don't consider the load times on Xbox one to be bad and the games don't stutter from that situation. I was expecting the same performance from a PC set up the same way. Am I wrong in that assumption?

nah, a PC will handle it as well as the X1 or Wii U. It likely comes Down to the preference of the end user itself, I consider external HDDs slow for gaming purposes both on my Wii U and my PC, Not gamebreaking, and it tends to result the most on the actual startup of the game itself, not when it is ingame.

I can not imagine it is any different on the X1, same pros, same cons.

You're comparing an inferior system to a PC.

This is the way I have it set up:

256GB SSD: On here I have the OS, and "heavy" games. Like those that require a lot of loading and power.

1TB Secondary HDD: Here I have all my data, and "light" games that don't require a super fast SSD to load.

That way I can have most of the games I'm playing at the moment installed.

I normally have space for only 2 or 3 games on the SSD, so I make sure I finish them and uninstall before installing another game.

this is what i do as well.

i would never install anything on an external drive because my main drive is a 500GB SSD and i have two secondary drives of 2TB capacity each. i have way more space than i need.

if i had a lack of physical space, such as on a laptop, i would use a hybrid drive that is perhaps 80gb SSD, with 500GB or 1TB HD (these drives can be quite expensive) that would give me enough storage for my "main" game(s) to be on the SSD along with the OS, with everything else on the spinning part. if i needed space beyond that, i would back up games to an external drive, but i wouldn't run them off it (unless maybe they were indie, "light" games, like FTL).

i don't know what the load times are on an xbox, but i'm assuming they are way longer than anything on an SSD, and they can't be faster than a HD. some games might stutter if run from an HD, but since no one really does that anymore for the aforementioned reasons, i can't say for sure.

external drives are meant for portability and backups, so if you don't need those things, it's best to run software from internal drives (it'll be cheaper too).

Depends what external drive you get, but many external drives aren't great at being constantly read or written. I used to have a Samsung external hard drive that I stored all my music on - for awhile I played music off it but it eventually failed and died. A friend gave me his external hard drive (Toshiba) so I used that for a few months and the same thing happened. It was a few years ago when all this happened so I'm not such if external hard drives are any better but I'm inclined to say they're much better for storage than constant use.

Usually what fails in an external HDD is the chip that transforms sata(or IDE if it's old) into USB, and the main thing that causes them to fail is the temperature. So just keeping them in a cool place or near a fan or away from sources of heat should do the trick. In the end external HDD's are basically a normal HDD but in a nice, brand specific made enclosure. If it dies, it's most probably just the same old random life expectancy of an HDD at play.

Ripped mines out after a year. I have a feeling why they fail too is they use crummy drives but I'm just assuming. Rocking a spinpoint samsung for 3 years when they used to sell the internals, I lay it on carpet for christ sake, and hasn't died on me. This sh*tty old wd green drive did die on me, but it ran much faster than ps3 load times, so I don't think external load times are an issue unless you are impatient.

@videodogg External hard drive works for pc, period! Best yet is that steam doesn't require you to reinstall or reconfigure anything, just plug and play into any computer with the files, login, and verification.

@Bikouchu35: thanks; i wish i had talk to you earlier. Too late now, but handy information for later.

WD Green Hard Drives are not meant for gaming. They are only used for home basic PCs to save power.

I have a Western Digital Elements External HDD and my internal SSD is also running out of space. The external is a USB 3.0 would this be like having an external HDD for the consoles?. Would it be also ok to install games on if needed?

I'll say that SSDs really need to drop down in price quickly. New PC games and there load times are starting to become unbearable. I heard DA:I has load times that are more then a minute long on HDDs. That's some stupid shit right there considering how often you hit a loading screen in that game.

Samsung SSD 250g for $125, 120gb for $60

Took a day to fill up dat 250g.

A good 250g SSD is not $125. That is still too expensive if it actually was.

There are no issues using an external usb 3.0 hd for games, I have a few on it and it's plenty fast. 95% of the speed as an internal sata drive.

You definitely don't need games installed on a SSD. And if the game somehow has unbearable load times, then that's a game I'm not playing anyway.

samsung EVO not good? lulz

I was thinking of the 500g price by mistake.

Still too expensive

Wutttttttttt? lol.....

Installing a game on an SSD isn't a necessity, but it makes a world of difference.

And you're judging a game by it's load time? I guess you never played games on cassette, lol.....

I don't see why not, all the optimized games load quickly.

I mean smash bros wii U on a disc has extremely fast loading times, levels load nearly instantly.

Loading times isn't always about a game being optimized or not, it's about the amount of things the level has to load.

A game like Smash Bro of course it going to load fast since it's only loading a small level.

So, you're saying if ubisoft or dice made a smash bros game on a system that ran on a disc with a ~1.2ghz cpu, it would load nearly instantaneously?

Nah.

You're comparing apple with oranges.

Consoles are designed in a way that they load games faster from disc, but forget about that for a minute.

You can't compare Smash Bros, which only loads a few characters and one level, against something like Unity or FarCry which is open world with thousands of things going on. Obviously the later would take more to load (even though both Unity and FarCry4 load under 30 seconds on SSD).

But yet, if Ubisoft were to make a simpler game with just one small level, it would load much faster than the other titles I mentioned.

I mean Sm4sh or any console game will load faster if you got it from the eshop rather than a disc, but it already loads quickly from the disc.

I guess we'll see when Zelda Wii U comes out, it's open world. I can guarantee you it will load relatively quickly.

I have all the games I'm currently playing installed (a dozen, mostly modern titles) and I still have 100GB+ of free space, 250gb isn't bad at all if you don't plan to store everything on it. Heck, a few the games I put on it barely even benefit from it and might as well be on my HDD (like all my Source titles).

@Videodogg: If you really want an external HDD for convenience/mobility/electric bill or whatever else, just buy an USB 3.0 enclosure, put your HDD on it and you're good to go.

It also depends on graphics and complexity of the game of course. Zelda will be a normal platformer/action game with cartoony graphics. Something like Unity is higher graphics, more complex game mechanics, lots more AI etc etc.

I'm not saying Ubisoft are optimized games, just saying that more complex the game, more load time (and by complex I don't mean just graphics)

250GB is a lot of space, but it becomes a lot less when you try to keep 50% (or at least 30%) free space, since if you go past that, theirs speeds and longevity starts decreasing.

Of course, but the hardware is much faster. A 7200rpm hd is way faster than the disc in the Wii U. Nintendo generally knows what is actually important for gameplay, hence quick loadings.

Wait, why can't you use an external HDD for storing and playing games?

you can find 500gb SSDs for about 200 now. that isnt at all unreasonable.

what would you know about console games anyhow, you and your friends are too "poor" to be console gamers, so you buy PCs instead

lolololololol oh god. this shit writes itself...

Coming from the guy who made the DA thread.

please finish your thought, because as of right now, this means literally nothing.

Yes it is, don't be crazy.

you are out of your mind

Your're insane

? a 1tb HDD is about 100-110. 200 for a 500gb SSD is -not- unreasonable. last year a 500gb SSD would cost you 400+. also the performance gains are huge, ofcourse you are going to pay more.

And before you spout your mouth at complete nonsense, make sure your comments actually reflect facts.

The cheapest 500GB SSD on Newegg is $209 being an A-Data, the 840 Evo is $229, and $200 != to $229.

And yeah $30 is a large enough difference for storage, its not for other PC parts because it may make a larger difference in performance.

A 1TB HDD is around 60$ and a 2TB HDD is around $100.

The performance gains are great for Windows, but the improvements for games aren't good enough. Especially considering now that modern games are 30+ gigs. Spending $200+ on an SSD is unreasonable, other PC components are around the same price range. Buying a new gaming PC a couple years ago would cost $600-$700, now it's $800-$1000 if you factor an SSD into the mix.