Best way to store games?

[therob]

I have a 1tb hard drive in my PC. Some games I recently bought average 50gb each. Ideally, I want all of my games fully downloaded and playable whenever I want. I don’t want to have to delete games to make room for others.

Can I download games onto external hard drives or even USB drives and have them work well or do games work best only on the PC’s actual hard drive?

If I can’t do the above methods, what’s the best way to keep games available to be played when your normal hard drive space dwindles down? Also, I probably won’t be upgrading the PC due to its age and the headache it would be to get it out of where I currently have it stored.

[emoticorpse]

I'd invest in an 4/8 TB internal drive and use that.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

If you have ALOT of Games like I do and wish to have all of them downloaded to be ready at all times, yes get at minimum a 4TB 7200rpm SATA HDD. I also prefer ones like 4TB or 8TB due to the fact that within the same model family (such as WD Black for example) the 4/6/8/10 TB models are much much faster then the smaller 1&2 TB models.

I have always had at least 2-3 drives per PC since the Win95 days.
Mainly because you should get used to configuring a PC so that if the OS Drive dies or gets corrupted, the OS ups and craps out, whatever... that you pretty much lose nothing but your time should that scenario arise where you have no choice but to wipe the OS Drive (or replace it) and clean install the OS in order to move forward again with that machine.

Externals are a no-go really for Games. I'd save that sort of a drive for things like downloaded files and just loose files in general that you feel you wish to hold on to for a long period of time, or until you feel the need to delete them, but feel they are needed in the short-term; etc.

Always use internal drives to store installed Apps & Games.
Regardless of your PC, even if it dates back to 2010 or so, you should by now have at least one SSD in your PC and if only one SSD; then that is the drive to install the OS + Apps onto. Games can be installed onto secondary HDD. Game Clients have the options available so you can tell it you want to install games to other drive letters.

[icehat]

get a renewed/refurbished HGST. they're an old series but they are basically the best hard drives ever made, extremely long service life and even the 7200RPM enterprise disks are cheap since most people only buy disks >8TB

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Escrito originalmente por icehat:

get a renewed/refurbished HGST. they're an old series but they are basically the best hard drives ever made, extremely long service life and even the 7200RPM enterprise disks are cheap since most people only buy disks >8TB

Good suggestion!
These have very good stock and price on Amazon for $139 for HGST (Renewed w/ 5 year warranty) 8TB 7200rpm 128MB Cache SATA Enterprise Class HDD

[Overseer]

You have to be careful with the enterprise models because there are some that won't work with regular PSUs. Also not to confuse SAS with SATA.
I have a HGST myself, but a 4Kn model i got brand new with 5 year warranty.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Lot of the newer games really want SSD, maybe better idea to invest into 2 TB SATA SSD, Crucial MX500 is usually reasonably priced and good quality.

[UserNotFound]

My Steam/EGS/etc games are stored in SATA SSDs or HDD depending on how often I play the game, as well as how much I like the game. I have a 4TB + 2TB + 2x 1TB SATA SSDs for games that I play often.

I agree that it's a good idea to snag a good Enterprise SATA HDD to store games, at least 4TB and higher. I did not get an Enterprise HDD for my gaming rig (in addition to the SATA SSDs) but did snag a 6TB WD Black to store more games. Yep, 14TB of storage for games, and only games.

[MoonC A T]

Escrito originalmente por therob:

Can I download games onto external hard drives or even USB drives and have them work well or do games work best only on the PC’s actual hard drive?

Steam and external drives don't work well together. Don't.

[Out Of Bubblegum]

Also get an external drive and back up that 4Tb drive. Or whatever size. Steam makes it easy to move games back and forth from an HD to/from an SSD. No need to overspend on an SSD when you want a lot of storage.

[Der tüddelige Fußgänger]

Escrito originalmente por emoticorpse:

I'd invest in an 4/8 TB internal drive and use that.

Yeah best move if you REALLY want ALL games ready to go.
Although you probably have many games, you havn't played in months or even years. And when you think "Man, i really want to play The witcher 3 again" You are probably stop caring about the witcher within those 15 minutes it takes to download it

[Illusion of Progress]

I was making this same choice, albeit 5 years back now. I went with a 5 TB Western Digital Black at the time and I've been happy with it.

Since then, the price/performance of that series has somewhat stagnated. I'm seeing the 6 TB now is barely cheaper than the 5 TB was for me then, and the 8 TB is more expensive, although the 4 TB seems it can be found a bit cheap. In that time, SSDs and 5,400 RPM HDDs have gotten markedly cheaper (as well as some 7,200 RPM drives but mostly those with SMR). Last year I got 4 TB Blue (5,400 RPM for storage) drives for half the price I paid for the 5 TB drive 5 years ago, which felt better. Because of this, the Black drives are a bit harder to recommend today, and the choices for large 7,200 RPM drives without SMR is seemingly getting smaller (and seem to be mostly enterprise class drives at those higher sizes).

I'd probably do something similar today though and get a 4 TB+ HDD, as others are saying, even if I didn't go with the same thing.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Can't beat these for the pricing.

HGST 7K4000 - 4TB SATA 7200rpm 64MB Cache - Enterprise Class - Renewed + 5 Year Warranty
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0856WZT3B

HGST HE8 - 8TB SATA 7200rpm 128MB Cache - Enterprise Class - Renewed + 5 Year Warranty
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W1PRTNJ

To get that level of performance you'd have to go with a much more expensive WD Black or Gold; or Seagate IronWolf series of drive...

[emoticorpse]

Escrito originalmente por Bad 💀 Motha:

Can't beat these for the pricing.

HGST 7K4000 - 4TB SATA 7200rpm 64MB Cache - Enterprise Class - Renewed + 5 Year Warranty
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0856WZT3B

HGST HE8 - 8TB SATA 7200rpm 128MB Cache - Enterprise Class - Renewed + 5 Year Warranty
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W1PRTNJ

To get that level of performance you'd have to go with a much more expensive WD Black or Gold; or Seagate IronWolf series of drive...

Going renewed for a drive strictly for gaming is a good idea. The warranty is still there and even if your stuff is lost, whatever it's not like you can't just download that junk again.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

And you take the same chances even with a brand new drive from store / retail box.
So in the end it doesn't matter much and you are not guaranteed any certain life-span out of any piece of hardware you buy anyways.

At least those prices I linked are very good for what you get. It's not like you are getting slow drives for that cheap price. They are easily on-par with much more expensive drives from WD and Seagate.

Not sure how the OP has his PC configured right now; but I would suggest to have at least 1x 250-500GB SSD + 1x 4TB minimum size (if you really have alot of games); for any Gaming PC as a bare minimum for internal drives. Use externals only for loose file storage, or if you need to do transfers of anything (even games) in case you needed to replace an internal drive, or perhaps wipe a drive clean and do a fresh format. Avoid using externals for anything that will be "installed" onto your system, such as any apps or games.

[Heretic]

Steam allows you to easily transfer games to other Steam libraries. You can have as many libraries on different drives as you like, within reason. It'll work on external drives too, but there may be a short delay when connecting it (Steam will have to look up the games to refresh your games list).