Playing Games on Pc drive while having Saves/DLC's on external

[MrUniverse731c]

So i have been on steam for a while now and i have just recently started playing Flight Simulator, this game takes up more than have my storage on my computer, i know its never recommended to play a game off an external drive but i was wondering if anyone knows if its possible to keep the core game on the pc but save all its extras (DLC's, saved games, control hardware etc.) and still be able to play without it causing issues to the experience, similar to the good ol days when we had a memory cards for the playstation and n64 or xbox360, thanks for any help and if there is a post that already answers this i couldnt find it but would be happy if someone dropped the link....

[Bad 💀 Motha]

DLCs are apart of the core game, so no, it downloads any DLC files into the game folder, you can't seperate them. Most games DLCs are a simple on/off switch anyways. Many games already contain the DLCs within the game files anyways, it's just a matter of it being unlocked to your account or not. But above all, no you can't separate the Game vs DLCs. If a game has a DLC as a Soundtrack or Artbook; stuff like that you can save some disk space by going to your DLC tab in the game properties in Steam and untick the boxes for those kinds of DLCs to have Steam remove those files from your Drive.

Saved Game files stored within areas such as Documents or AppData take up very little space anyways.

While you can change the location of Documents to reside on another drive, you never would want that to be on an external, just in-case something happens where the drive goes missing or gets unplugged.

But some games use the AppData structure instead of Documents.

Sounds like you just need to invest in some larger sized internal drives. How is that a problem?

2TB SSDs are cheap now.

[_I_]

game saves can be anywhere
from windows registry, to user docs, or some games save them in the game install folder

external drive is going to be slow

the old console flash cards were very slow, but not much was saved on them, game saves were basically flags for what has been completed in games progress

agreed, if its a desktop, get a 2.5in sata ssd, and install games there
if its a laptop, get a 2tb drive (m.2 or sata) for that and reinstall the os on it

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Externals are not ALL slow. If it's an external SSD, then it's fine.
Never use External HDDs for this though. Use those for just backing up files or off-loading things taking up too much space you wish to save for later; such as large amounts of pictures, videos, movie files; maybe large downloaded files; etc.

Overall best bet for Games is to store on Internal Storage; if that must be a HDD, that is fine, but not good for Flight Sims or Open World Games, or more demanding games that are constantly loading in game assets as you move around the world. Less demanding games should be fine running off a HDD, all those others should be on internal SSD.

You are not forced to store games on C Drive though. But as for things games save, such as their config files and user saved game slot files, the folders that house those should be left alone; since it can vary game to game anyways like we already said.