External SSD makes my Games Stutter

[PapaJohn69]

I'm beat. I spent countless hours trying to fix the problem, but I can't seem to find the solution. Help would be appreciated.

I'm using an internal SSD (samsung 990 pro) and an external SSD (Corsair EX100U). When I play games on my internal SSD everything is fine, but when I decide to play steam games downloaded on my external SSD the games stutter like in my linked video.
https://imgur.com/a/eQBighD

The external SSD's format is btrfs, the port used by the SSD operates at 10gbps.

My PC specs are:

Motherboard: B650I AORUS ULTRA
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 8-Core Processor
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER

Using Arch Linux

[RPG Gamer Man]

External Hard drives are not recommended to play games on steam. It can cause hangups, crashing, and issues like you are talking about.

[tintingaroo]

Have you tried with a performance/usage monitor open? Perhaps it can give an indication or a clue to things, like does the drive usage (or other system component usage) spike/drop in correlation to stutters.
Could check what the perf monitor reports for the same game when on internal.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by RPG Gamer Man:

External Hard drives are not recommended to play games on steam. It can cause hangups, crashing, and issues like you are talking about.

Well not quite. In older days, yes it wasn't recommmended. Nowadays it should be fine with things like USB 3.0 and on.

I've personally only ever gamed on Steam with laptops and hard drives for some 14 years, with not so much as a hiccup.

But of course there are a few things you need to pay attention to.

You need to make sure you use a good USB port and an older slower USB A lesser than USB 3 nowadays might not be so good. Also, of course it depends on the speed of your hard drive too. As well as making sure your cables up to fettle and the connection is - USB connections are ♥♥♥♥♥, and easy to have them go funky and not know it.

To the OP - I would urge you try sdwapping a few things round.

First off, what speed is this hard drive? Is it USB 3?
Try using the drive with a different USB connection or hub. Try updating the USB drivers.
Make sure that the USB hub isn't being used with too many other devices as power draw can wreck things.
Again, try chaing the cable to another one, and if things still keep playing up, give your hard drive and intensive scan to make sure it's not failing or faulty in some way. Because again, it shouldn't cause issues unless you're trying to play some really cutting edge game that demnads a high data rate.

Lastly, if all else fails try moving the games you have issues with onto another internal drive.

I do have a couple of games that do cause issues on my laptop so a bit of help from my SSD goes some way. Namely 7 Days to Die as creating a new game takes an age to generate when it's not on SSD. Also Assetto Corse because the phsyics in that game can cause stutters.