Do steam games play normally if installed on external hardrive?

Összes téma > Steam fórumok > Help and Tips > Téma részletei

Soras Memories 2015. jún. 15., 15:21

I've been considering getting an external hardrive and moving all my games, which are in my Program Files folder, to the hardrive. I figured this might be a good idea incase I ever need to build a new computer entirely.

Will the games still function normally from the hardrive or will Steam no longer recognize them as mine? Do I have to install them manually to the hardrive?

Any advice would be awesome. Thank you

< >

1–7/7 megjegyzés mutatása

Mattio 2015. jún. 15., 15:30

Your games will still work as intended, but as it's an external HDD connected via USB, your game loading will probably be quite slow.
I'd recommend USB3.0 if your motherboard supports it, to maximise the performance. But still you will be subject to greater loading times and possible freezes/stutters/popping, depending on the game & if the game read/writes a lot of data as it goes.

forsakensora eredeti hozzászólása:
Do I have to install them manually to the hardrive?

No, Steam has a built in feature (see below) to set up directories where you can download and install games to.
Steam -> Settings -> Downloads -> Steam Library Folders.

Soras Memories 2015. jún. 15., 15:34

@Mattio: Thank you for your reply. I did not consider the possibility that having my games on an external hardrive would be a potential issue, performance wise. Perhaps an external hardrive isn't the way to go....

Mattio 2015. jún. 15., 15:55

forsakensora eredeti hozzászólása:
@Mattio: Thank you for your reply. I did not consider the possibility that having my games on an external hardrive would be a potential issue, performance wise. Perhaps an external hardrive isn't the way to go....

If you want the cheap space of a HDD go for an internal SATA3 one, 7200RPM. A dedicated HDD to storing games internally is pretty decent and sufficient enough to enjoy. Plus if you did get a new PC you can always transfer it over to the new PC no problem. Same goes with an SSD too.

Lupin III 2015. jún. 15., 16:00

What I do is store my installed games when I'm done playing them on a big slow hard drive and when I want to go back to playing it I move it onto my SSD. If you do this you'll want to turn off all the automatic updates for games in steam or sometimes it'll try to download the entire game again just to apply a patch.

Steam is also pretty smart when it comes to changing computers... you can move a stored game to your new computer's fast drive and then as long as you are using the same steam directory it'll scan it and set it up without having to download all the data again.

Spazzard 2015. jún. 17., 7:53

Actually, It depends on the Game.

A lot of games wont work from external drives, even if they were installed via steam. SR4, Nail'd and McPixel are a few that come to mind, but theres a load of games that just don't work on an external drive.