Need help installing games using External Hard Drive

[TripleBThreat]

I have a 1tb hardrive that i want to use to install all my steam games. Reason why is i have a 250gb SSD in my laptop and as youd imagine, i cant fit the games i want to on it. But im getting tons of errors trying to open or update games becuase i dont have a nfts file system is there any way around this or a fix or if someone could walk me through redoing it that would be awesome

[wuddih]

format the drive in ntfs.

[TripleBThreat]

wuddih eredeti hozzászólása:

format the drive in ntfs.

you make it sound simple but ik its not I don't know how to do that

[rfpraweb]

If you have data on that hard drive (the external 1TB) make sure you back it up first before you do anything. Open Windows Explorer (or other file management program). Locate the drive and right click on it and select properties (there is a more administrative way of doing this but figure keep simple).

On the "General" Tab if you look down to File System you will see the file system is on the 1TB.

Unless you want to play around with commercial software to convert the file system (there are some free options as well), just make sure you backup and then do what wuddih says. Two ways to do this.

Fastest way. As long as Windows can see the hard drive, right click on that drive (after you have made that backup or transfer data you want to keep to another drive, please note this does not mean to another partition on that same external drive, so it has to be another physical hard drive (sorry don't know you knowledge level)

Move your mouse down till you see Format, click on that. Then make sure any work you are doing is saved and all other windows are closed. It will bring up a small slim window saying Format - X (Y:) where X is the name of the drive if you gave it one and Y is the drive Letter

You will see capacity and below that is the file system. Select NTFS (which should show as default if not don't worry).

At Volume Label you can name the drive, what ever you want but you are limited I believe to 11 characters.

Make sure to check quick format, then start.

Windows then might say it has found new hardware, don't worry as it is seeing your newly formatted drive

if it doesn't, best thing to do, would be go to the area in bottom right of the screen where you see the date and time and either you will have all these icons running from the time and to the left or you will see a little arrow point up. Click on the arrow if that is the only thing present, if they are already showing, then follow the next step for both, you should see a black rectangular icon (which resembles a USB cable connector ) with a green dot next to it, if you can't find something that looks like that or is too small on your laptop, hover your mouse over the icons till you find one that says "Safetly remove Hardware and Eject Media" click on it.

This can take several seconds to get a response, so just wait. When it does respond it will list at the top "Open Printers and Devices". Below that should be the drive you just formatted. If it is there click on it and wait till it says it is safe to remove the device (just turn it off or disconnected it from the laptop) if you get a notice box that says the device is currently in use and cannot be disconnected you should go through the normal shutdown of Windows.

Once it is off disconnect the cable for the external drive and reboot your computer. Once in Windows, plug back in your external drive (doen't really matter if the external drive is already powered up) and Windows should detect it. If not then just verify that the device manager shows it. Also go into Admin tools -> Computer Management

On the left side select "Disk Management". It will then list all your drives and any partitions. If your drive is there then you are good to go.

Just make sure to tell Steam that the external drive is the location of the Steam Library (or it will install the games on the SSD or whereever you have installed Steam - I haven't done this in ages so I don't know if it ask you for a default install directory for the games or if the default install location for games is based on where you install Steam. For example if you install Steam on D drive/partition (I usually have more than 1 partition on my desktop drives), then all the games will install to D:. There is an option when installing to show where to install your games.

Good luck. Send me a PM if you have any further ?'s and I will try to help where I can. I don't normally read the forums, I will subscribe to this discussion should you decide to post.

[Wickid_Splat]

First if you are going to run steam games from an external hard drive you will not like the result. Not only will your games lag because of being on a EXTERNAL HDD (hard disk drive) but they will also lag due to the extra time it takes for the system to load the game from the external hard drive.

As you probably know by now there are two types of main drives used in todays computers. SSD (solid state drive) or HDD (hard disk drive) SSD's are must faster than HDD which is why Operating systems are installed on them. Pros - very fast, Cons - expensive. The next level down is a INTERNAL HDD which have more space for a lesser price but are not quite as fast. Pros-cost effective, Cons - not as fast.

I would imagine that even a memory stick would be faster than a external HDD.

I also have a external HDD and i just use it for storage is all. Thats basically what they are designed for, not for gaming which needs lots of cache and constant IO. (input output)

You would be much better off using your external HDD for storage and get you a internal HDD for the games. You can get a decent 2TB INTERNAL HDD fairly inexpensive at places like NEWEGG.

Then after you physically install the drive you will need to go into windows drive managenent and initialize the drive. Then you can format it NFTS (which you should always format any drive you get - even if its pre formated and new)

There are videos on youtube how to format your drive, check out the linus videos, he is a good guy and knows his stuff. This video was about 6 years ago when he was just starting out i believe, but the principles are the same, linus has come a long way since his initial videos and is respected world wide now and has a very professional lab and office now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7_aZwQ_p4w

That will help you.

I know you want to play your games but putting them on a external hard drive is a huge mistake, and you will not be happy with the results. Either spend the big money an a huge SSD which is the best way if you can afford it, or get yourself a INTERNAL HDD and go from there, you will be much happier.

JW

[rfpraweb]

But also remember some systems don't have additional options/bays for more than 1 drive and the bay he has might not even be the standard 2.5" format, which means it will be hard to find a large drive to put in there if it isn't a 2.5" standard. He also might have an older laptop that might lack msata or m2 ports/slots. The only place where on a laptop there might be another slot would be the Optical Drive bay as most laptop makers allow that to be removed and replaced with a drive bay adapter (but it varies by maker and also how old the laptop is).

Now I have used an external drive to play Steam games. The big AAA titles like a Total War will as you said be awful and pausing/skipping alot, even with a 7200rpm on a USB 3.0 connection. to the original OP, what port are you using to connect your external drive to and what is the external drive rpm and buffer and does it use any "eco" type speed adjustments. I ran my external on a XP machine using a 2.0 port of that era and yeah it sometimes was horrible, but since the largest hard drive at that time or any for that old laptop with IDE I think was 250GB gave me no choice. With my current laptop, Alienware M17x R4, I have 2 bays, the optical bay could be converted and the msata (which while only sata 2.0 or 3gbs still is faster than the mechanical and it allows me to keep the optical drive in its bay, while I loaded 2 hitachi 1tb 7200rpm drives into the two drive bays (non-raid) and 850 evo 1tb in the msata to give a 3tb capacity total on my laptop - yes overkill).

So to the original OP can you post more details. If it is a 5400 rpm drive, power saving, eco, green or other type drive that indicates it is not a performance unit, then you might very likely see a loss of performance and it will depend on what you can tolerate. Best thing to do is install a current AAA title, a few of them, and then run it on the external drive to see if you can tolerate it. If you only have a USB 2.0, unless you are playing indie low end games, then you will quickly get frustrated by the dealy. Put USB 2 plus 5400rpm together and as JW said, not worth it.

[Wickid_Splat]

+1 good followup rfpraweb :)

[rfpraweb]

Cool that means I can take a penny off my next purchase - ha ha ha (was just posting in the disappointment with this winter sale so had to be goofy a little).

Being serious, I appreciate the propz.