Installing Steam game files to external HDD?

[Zergged.XH]

I recently bought a nice 1TB Western Digital HDD, and was wondering how one installs their games to it, specifically Steam games. Help, please?

[Terminus]

Moving Your Steam Installation.

Moving Existing Games.

I've been running Steam and the respective games from a 1TB WD HDD (USB 3), for ~18 months, and haven't had any issues thus far, however "It is not recommended that you install Steam / Games to an external hard drive due to potential performance issues."

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Best is just add in another internal drive. External HDDs are not good, due to much lower performance. Those can only really keep up decent reads/writes speeds if it is a 7200rpm HDD running off USB 3.0; otherwise just add another internal SATA drive.

[Zergged.XH]

Thank you Terminus for those links!

Bad-Motha, I would do that, except I had the bright idea of getting a gaming laptop instead of putting together my own desktop. On one hand, it's really easy to go to LAN parties; on the other, no upgrading >_> .

[Bad 💀 Motha]

If the external is not USB 3.0; then I'd return it. You can simply buy an internal SATA 7200rpm HDD and then buy an external USB 3.0 enclosure that supports SATA drives inside. Plus internal drives (like WD Black) tend to have much longer warranty. Very few externals have any decent performance, or warranty length.

[Zergged.XH]

It's a 1TB WD Elements USB 3.0. And is black.

[AtheonX]

Good luck, tell us how it works. Some externals are hell. I had issues with a WD MyBook going to sleep all the time, and even though it was an eSata drive, there would be pauses and hiccups while playing games from it. It might have been broken though. Others perform identical to internal HDDs, and I am very happy with my Freecom Quattro 3.0 which I have used for Steam without issues for two years.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

All secondary drives go to Sleep. That is a default in Windows OS. U can change this timing via Control Panel > Power Options > Change Plan Settings > Change Advanced > Hard Disk > edit the time here in Minutes.

Ensure drive is awakened before launching Steam Client to ensure any games installed their are properly recognized.

[AtheonX]

Yeah, I have tried setting that to "Never". But the old WD Mybook and my current "wannabe" external HDD setup (Icybox feat. old internal HDDs) for my laptop fully ignores that setting and goes to sleep as soon as they can. On the Icybox setup I have to use an external app (DriveAlive) to keep it from sleeping.

[Zergged.XH]

Well, the external drive lets me play XCOM:EW and Civ 5 without a hitch. Dawn of War Soulstorm also worked, an older game.

1TB WD Elements USB 3.0, got it for I think $60 on a sale online.

[Mike 17]

yh

[Svin Diesel]

DD

[oiloilhjhjn n]

Ya

[GlxyNeko]

I'm installing my games to a 1TB HDD instead of my main SSD. Works like a charm :)

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

If the external is not USB 3.0; then I'd return it. You can simply buy an internal SATA 7200rpm HDD and then buy an external USB 3.0 enclosure that supports SATA drives inside. Plus internal drives (like WD Black) tend to have much longer warranty. Very few externals have any decent performance, or warranty length.

It really depends on what you're comfortable with.

I've used externals for ages, and while there is a difference it really isn't THAT much in most of the cases by far.

For the future, OP, on top of what's already been said, if you find yourself needing to move game files around in future, I';d strongly recommend GameSaveManager which has a facility in it called SteamMover (or something like that). It moves the requisite game files AND does all the links too, so nothing extra is required.