How to download a game in a USB drive HELP

[imlq]

I want do download a game on my computer but i dont have anough space. so i bought a USB drive to download it there. But i dont know how to. Help please

[crunchyfrog]

You can't.
USb sticks are NOT drives. They're used for offline storage.

Drives constantly work writing and readin back and forth. Sticks CAN'T do this - or if you try they will fail soon enough.

All you can do is free up the space and move the game files from the stick.

Or you could buy a external USB hard drive - last one I bought a few months ago was a 2TB one from Amazon and it only cost £40.

[Jmancav69]

I also want to download and install on a external micro sd card. I am getting "this drive is read only" how can I use this with my steam? I have no more room on my c:\ drive.

[Cathulhu]

MicroSD is even worse than USB drives. Don't bother. Clean up some space on your C: drive instead.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Cheap common USB pen/thumb drives are not great for games such as if they're not design for high STABLE speeds, or to deal with OVERHEATING.

If this is to play very low performance games may work just fine. Like pixel games, or such that are small.

MIcro SD cards can be worse, and if it cheap kind, might as well forget it, and use it for storage only.

You mainly want your USB drive to be able to keep stable above 30MB/s for decent experience for old games, if can't do that then you can expect problems, such as crashing, stuttering, freezing, and really long loading times.

It's best to get a external HDD, or SSD, as they will meet the requirements, would recommend using USB 3.0, or better storage device, can still encounter possible issues, but it's a lot less likely to happen.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

Please note there is no magic for usb pen/thumb drives to fixing their problems, especially Micro SD cards, do your research, but really you be buying a premium to meet said requirements. So might as well get external HDD, or SSD.

Please note you want your drive to be format as NTFS, do not want it to be fat32, or exfat32.

Have fun.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Jmancav69:

I also want to download and install on a external micro sd card. I am getting "this drive is read only" how can I use this with my steam? I have no more room on my c:\ drive.

Try reading the comments posted BEFORE YOU POST.

You cannot. Or at least you could try and fail quickly then wonder why.

You will essentially be trying to use a rubber band as a tyre on a car.

[Zekiran]

The most you could do with either of those media is *store* files, not a 'game' but store the files themselves, for moving them to a proper drive. And even then, you'd be better off just getting it downloaded onto a proper drive in the first place.

[Jmancav69]

ok i purchased a drive on this advice and now my drive wont be recognized
thanks

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Jmancav69:

ok i purchased a drive on this advice and now my drive wont be recognized
thanks

Define this a bit more. How do mean "won't be recognised".

What error messsages are you getting? what's the make and model of drive? And so on.

Help us and we'll help you.

[Zekiran]

Originally posted by Jmancav69:

ok i purchased a drive on this advice and now my drive wont be recognized
thanks

"A drive" - do you mean an internal hard drive? and external usb hard drive? a usb stick? an SD card? Please be very specific. How big in gig/terrabytes is the drive? is it formatted already?

[ReBoot]

Why not installing an additional internal drive?

[Zekiran]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Why not installing an additional internal drive?

I can imagine perhaps a few scenarios:

it's a work / school computer, it's a friend's, it's their parent-on-one-weekend-a-month's, etc. to take their drive with them. An internal would kinda suck for that, tbh. I have an external drive, but it's a 2tb one so it's not like it's a stick or some tiny thing. (plus it's mainly my data that I don't want to lose in a fire y'know what I mean? even if I can't yank the whole thing in an emergency I'd be able to save my art and writing, i can always get the games back later...)

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Zekiran:

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Why not installing an additional internal drive?

I can imagine perhaps a few scenarios:

it's a work / school computer, it's a friend's, it's their parent-on-one-weekend-a-month's, etc. to take their drive with them. An internal would kinda suck for that, tbh. I have an external drive, but it's a 2tb one so it's not like it's a stick or some tiny thing. (plus it's mainly my data that I don't want to lose in a fire y'know what I mean? even if I can't yank the whole thing in an emergency I'd be able to save my art and writing, i can always get the games back later...)

... or maybe that's the OP hasn't thought of (yet) or are afraid of touching a screwdriver which they should not be.
My only external drive is one for movies, should I have to save data during the unlikely event of the house burning, I'll yank the rather compact NAS out of it's closet.

[Jmancav69]

sorry all was away for a while. yes I have a mac book pro and it's internal drive is full. I want to install to my external storage. they are micro cards.

[Jmancav69]

you can not change the internal hard drive on my macbook pro

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Jmancav69:

sorry all was away for a while. yes I have a mac book pro and it's internal drive is full. I want to install to my external storage. they are micro cards.

If you ain't intending on taking your SD card out, you can totally put Steam games there. However, better get a really big & really fast SD card (there's material out there on what "fast" exactly means & in case of doubt, SanDisk's speed ratings aren't Chinese ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥) which is also large & put your whole Steam folder there, including the games. Keeping Steam & the games together is generally helping avoid potential issues & the games are the ones that need fast storage, not Steam. No idea how MacOS handles this, but Windows deactivates write cache for SD cards by default. It can and should be enabled. Make sure MacOS treats your SD card as close to internal storage as possible via whatever means MacOS provides. You can even format it with a "real" file system! My Windows tablet runs it SD card in NTFS, take whatever is applicable for MacOS.

What I suggest doing if you're going to swap the SD card is the following:
-back up any of your installed games onto this SD card
-uninstall it
-install the game you're talking about into the now-space
-back up to SD & uninstall games you aren't currently/frequently playing to get internal space

That's what I used to do, just with an HDD instead of an SD card before I upgraded to an internal 1 TB NVMe SSD.