Planning to use an external SSD to store Steam games

[Heidrek]

Hi, just want to ask, saw tacoshy's guide on external drives for Steam games https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Master_Race_Geeks/discussions/0/1735466157768391213/

I'm planning to follow it, like not going overkill with NVMe and going USB 3.1 Gen 2 for enclosure etc.

Are there new points to take into account in 2022 for choosing an external SSD for Steam games? Like new "best practices" for it or new connection tech that I should be aware of?

Besides the Samsung EVO 860, what would be a good SSD to get for this use-case? It's still expensive in our region to get and hoping for something reliable but less costly.

Thanks!

[MancSoulja]

I recently installed some games on my spare PC using a 5900 RPM USB 3.0 HDD and they actually run fine, much better than I would have ever expected.

So I expect you should be fine with any USB 3.0 SSD, just remember to ensure that any USB storage devices are connected before you launch Steam or installed games will not be detected.

[Elucidator]

Things have changed since 2018
Keep in mind that Steam gets buggy and glitchy, especially with windows 11 combined with this.

Basically, Steam has problems when Steam is not installed on the same drive as where the games go (as of late). (internal/external doesn't matter, Steam is slower if the library is elsewhere)
So a best practise would be to install Steam itself on the external drive and you'll likely be fine. If you're not fine, then currently I'd blame Windows 11, because so far the issues are on Windows 11 only.

[Heidrek]

Thanks for the feedback! Are "portable" Steam installations still a thing? Back when thumbdrives were widespread, I remember you can do that.

On the software side, I'll keep in mind that point of installing Steam on the same drive. Thanks!
On the hardware side, are the points on the guide still hold up?
And may I ask some recommendations for reliable, bang for the buck SSDs and USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosures available in 2022?

[Satoru]

Steam doesnt support external drives as such you may experience issues such as your games appearing as uninstalled.

People 'say' it works but it only does if you adhere to a rather strict set of rules and use cases and procedures. Its a list of "oh dont do this or that or this other hting and make sure you do x before y but not after z"


Does it 'work'? yes

Is it reliable? 'sorta'.

[Heidrek]

Well, it's just games anyway so it doesn't bother me if I need to fiddle around since it's just a sort of convenient 'cache' so to speak of games from my library I can load whenever I login anywhere else. If it doesn't work I'll have a storage drive I can use for other things anyway so I don't see it as much of a loss.

That said, if anyone can help with this: In general, with SSDs regardless if it's for games or not, besides Samsung, what's a good bang-for-the-buck brand? I know Samsung's the gold standard for this but I want to sift through the other reliable options. Thanks!

[Satoru]

Most SSD sare basically fine and you dont really need the super high end stuff really

Avoid QLC drives but other than that it doesnt make that much of a difference

Yes people will say "drive x is faster with blah blah blah" but the reality is that for games basically any SSD basically caps out the benefits of load times or such that SSD provides. LIke yes if you're trying to edit 8k 60fps video live in Adobe Premiere then you probably want a monstrous fast SSD. But like games are not going to have significant differences once you convert to SSD. Basically the jump from HDD to SSD is significatnt. But the jump from 'mid tier' to 'high tier' SSD really only comes into play in specific workflow scenarios, and gaming really isn't one of them.

I'm sure someone might say "but look the xbox instant play thing is coming to PC!" and yeah ok so what games use that right nwo? None. Why bother dumping a metric ton of money into a PCIE4 ssd so you can basically see zero benefit from it until some random Micorosft publisher gamedev bothers to put that functionality in, which probably wont happen for years. Just wait that out until PCIE4 ssds drop in price and tehre's actually games that take advantage of that technology

[Heidrek]

Thanks a lot for sharing what you know on this. I've been hearing a lot of problems in the storage tech space recently (i.e. a whole exabyte worth of chips lost in a fab so prices are about to increase in NAND flash, Seagate and WD labeling their HDD as one thing but performance and failure rates say otherwise etc.) so I've been cautious on what to buy.

[Elucidator]

Toshiba hdds are an option. (I currently don't trust seagate and western digital, due to.. them being hdd overlords basically (which means capitalism, which means some disks have shorter life spans on purpose and its a gamble whether you get that one or not ) )
yes, blame cryptomining industry for chip shortage. (its not their fault but they are quickly plucking away gpus, causing it to become worse quickly)
Format your disk to NTFS to avoid issues with Steam. (exFAT has a few issues with steam at least)
Unless you have linux, I guess, btrfs, ext4, etc is good. I don't know how steam handles ReFS, so no clue.