Question about reinstall and SSD

[Clovis Sangrail]

I have two computers -- one for work and one for life and games.

Games computer has big-ass 1T SSD. It holds a ton of ♥♥♥♥. No disk-space problems here.

Work computer is smaller for ease of travel, and it only has a 250G SSD. Work computer is still cranking an i7 and a decent enough video card to play BG3.

It is my understanding that come go-live in a week or so, I will need to uninstall what I have and reinstall to get the new, improved and completed game.

Not a problem, but here's my question -- I have a 1T external SSD drive. Can I plug that bad boy into my work computer and install BG3 on it? Will the game recognize an installation on an external SSD drive?

Thanks.

[DarkWaterSong]

The problem is speed, and by speed I mean the rate data can flow to your CPU. External drives and Hard Drives are significantly slower than M.2. drives. As in orders on magintude.

Also M.2. NVME SSD are getting really cheap, even the ones with a decent amount of D-Ram. Like a 1 TB drive is $60 USD:
https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-black-sn850x-nvme-ssd#WDS100T2X0E

Also most motherboard and laptops have M.2. drive slots, as in boards from over 6 years ago have at least 1 slot if not 2 or more. Now if you have a laptop that has no M.2. slots because all storage is soldered to you motherboard, thunderbold 3 might work but even thunderbolt 4 is probably to slow.

Also what you are going to get is stutters and frame drops.

[Razorblade]

Originally posted by Clovis Sangrail:

It is my understanding that come go-live in a week or so, I will need to uninstall what I have and reinstall to get the new, improved and completed game.

That's not completely accurate. Larian's CEO stated in a podcast that the game's release update will be practically a fresh install. That means the update is going to be nearly a full install in size, not that you literally have to delete and reinstall the game.

Originally posted by Clovis Sangrail:

I have two computers -- one for work and one for life and games.
Not a problem, but here's my question -- I have a 1T external SSD drive. Can I plug that bad boy into my work computer and install BG3 on it? Will the game recognize an installation on an external SSD drive?

Yes, you can download Steam games on an external hard drive, and either play it straight off of there (not recommended because of bad write speeds), or move your install from your external to your main drive straight from Steam's client.

If you Google either of those tasks, you'll find plenty of step by step instructions on how to do so.

[Zekrah]

I HIGHLY recommned you to install it on the SSD,I bought a new 512gb for this game,since its simply unplayable on HDD too much stuttering,textures not loading fast enough,cinematics lagged just unplayable.

[IRMcG]

Originally posted by Clovis Sangrail:

Not a problem, but here's my question -- I have a 1T external SSD drive. Can I plug that bad boy into my work computer and install BG3 on it? Will the game recognize an installation on an external SSD drive?

Thanks.

Yes, that's exactly how I'm running the EA and it runs far better than from my HDD. You can just select the SSD as a Steam Library location for install. Saves are in the documents file on the main system though.

If you've got modern USB ports (USB 3.1 or better) on your work PC you shouldn't have any load speed issues.

[Clovis Sangrail]

Thanks everyone.

First off -- my mistake. My work computer has a 512 GB SSD. Of that, 256 GB is free. The 200 GB used contains all operating system, MS Office software, work related documents, and BG3. BG3 is using just under 80GB, so I should easily be able to download the full game next week and still probably have a couple hundred Gigabytes free. I dpn't knpw if I would be able to put Bannerlord on there, but BG1 and BG1 should fit fine. The computer does have one USB C port, but alas, no lightning bolt.

Game/home use computer has 1 TB SSD, so that's where most of the games will live. It two USB C ports, both with lightning bolts. So the computer that has the lightning bolts isn't the one that needs them. Oh, well.

Thanks again.

[Psy^]

Originally posted by IRMcG:

Originally posted by Clovis Sangrail:

Not a problem, but here's my question -- I have a 1T external SSD drive. Can I plug that bad boy into my work computer and install BG3 on it? Will the game recognize an installation on an external SSD drive?

Thanks.

Yes, that's exactly how I'm running the EA and it runs far better than from my HDD. You can just select the SSD as a Steam Library location for install. Saves are in the documents file on the main system though.

If you've got modern USB ports (USB 3.1 or better) on your work PC you shouldn't have any load speed issues.

any ssd works? i have an old one, 1tb but its DRAMLess, which makes transfering large files very very slow (cause of depleted cache), but how does it performs in bg3? will it be good? or will i have to upgrade?