Computer Games on External Hard Drive

[Silkywings]

Hi everyone! I am still fairly new so am learning the ups and downs of threading. I have over 200 computer games from Big Fish. I keep about 20 on my computer and the rest stays with Big Fish and are available whenever I want to reinstall them.

My ?....I would feel better having all 220 games on my hard drive to access at my convenience. I have 500GB and have used about 40GB in the last year (new computer purchased 12/09). Would it be better to put these games on an external hard drive, can I play from my external hard drive or do I have enough room on my computer hard drive (I don't know how many GBs that would use). I don't have any music or movies on my computer except for about 10 albums.

[Ancient Dragon]

Whether to use internal or external hard drive will depend on how much disk space all those games will consume. Since you have such a huge internal hard drive I would put them there if they take less than a couple hundred gb.

[AndreRet]

Yes, you can play all your games of your external drive. Most of your new games (proper games) is between 2 and 6 GB in size, so you can store almost up to 400 games on your drive!;)

[Sudo Bash]

External hard drives and flash drives are much slower than the internal hard drive(s). Unless you have USB 3.0 ports then I would go with the internal hard drive but, bear in mind, writing and re-writing things on your hard drive will wear it out. I can't wait until solid state hard drives become common because they are so much more reliable.

Most of your new games (proper games) is between 2 and 6 GB in size

As a retro gamer I think the best games are between 32 and 125k in size. ;)

[cwarn23]

External hard drives and flash drives are much slower than the internal hard drive(s). Unless you have USB 3.0 ports then I would go with the internal hard drive but, bear in mind, writing and re-writing things on your hard drive will wear it out. I can't wait until solid state hard drives become common because they are so much more reliable.

As a retro gamer I think the best games are between 32 and 125k in size. ;)

Agreed to some extent however why use the old fashion USB technology for this job. Why not something like Gigabit ethernet or firewire. Both of which have faster speeds and make cheap alternatives to an internal hard drive IF you have an irrelevant power supply. If however your power supply has enough wattage to handle another hard drive then by all means the internal drive is a better and more efficient option.