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Dino_DNA May 2, 2024 @ 11:44pm

Alienware Aurora R16 and WD P40 External SSD issues

Hello all,

Bought a WD P40 external SSD to go with my Alienware rig with the sole intent of playing Steam games directly from the drive. I have it connect to the USBC 3.2 2x2 port on the back of my rig as it should be. Crystal is showing read speeds of 1950 -1990 for the drive so that checks. My issue is that I cant play anything directly from the drive without it exiting back to the steam desktop. The games will load fine but after just a few minutes its no bueno. No error message or windows popup. The P40 dashboard says all is well.

I thought maybe its the cable, although I've only had the drive for about a week. Went ahead and order a new 3.2 cable but the problem persists. It will "crash" after a few minutes, regardless the game I run:

- Fallout 4
- Forenza 4
- Siege
- Manor Lord

You get the idea. The games work perfectly fine if I run them from the internal SSD but I dont know what else to try in order to make them work on the external drive. Is there a secret to getting these games to run from an external SSD?

TIA

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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments

Zygfryd May 3, 2024 @ 12:37am

Have you tried running a game on a 5Gbps USB port?

Dino_DNA May 3, 2024 @ 12:58am

Originally posted by Zygfryd:
Have you tried running a game on a 5Gbps USB port?

The port Im runnning it on can support up to 20 Gbps. Thats whats throwing me off. It should work fine but something is amiss. Almost ready to RMA the drive and pick up another internal instead.

Zygfryd May 3, 2024 @ 1:04am

Originally posted by Dino_DNA:
The port Im runnning it on can support up to 20 Gbps. Thats whats throwing me off. It should work fine but something is amiss. Almost ready to RMA the drive and pick up another internal instead.

Right. I'm asking you to try a different, slower port to see if it works under less strenuous conditions.

76561199648916059 May 3, 2024 @ 1:09am

Just take the drive out of the case, it's a standard SSD drive , plug it into a SATA port on your pc

Dino_DNA May 3, 2024 @ 2:02am

Originally posted by Zygfryd:
Originally posted by Dino_DNA:
The port Im runnning it on can support up to 20 Gbps. Thats whats throwing me off. It should work fine but something is amiss. Almost ready to RMA the drive and pick up another internal instead.
Right. I'm asking you to try a different, slower port to see if it works under less strenuous conditions.

Huh, that seems to work. Though with that port Im only seeing 500 MBps read times. I dont understand why it wouldn't work with on the 20 Mbps port. Is that too fast for games? What do you mean when you say "less strenuous" ? I appreciate the solution but the speed is such a sacrifice...

Zygfryd May 3, 2024 @ 2:36am

Originally posted by Dino_DNA:
Huh, that seems to work. Though with that port Im only seeing 500 MBps read times. I dont understand why it wouldn't work with on the 20 Mbps port. Is that too fast for games? What do you mean when you say "less strenuous" ? I appreciate the solution but the speed is such a sacrifice...

It's not too fast for games, but it's too fast for *something*. It could be a driver, firmware or hardware issue. Check if there's a BIOS update available, check if there's a drive firmware update available in WD's software (if so, don't do the update over the misbehaving port).
I used the word "strenuous", because higher speed equals higher load, whether electrical, thermal or computational.

I see on photos of R16 that it also has 10Gbps ports, try those too.

Last edited by Zygfryd; May 3, 2024 @ 2:41am

Dino_DNA May 3, 2024 @ 2:44am

Originally posted by Zygfryd:
Originally posted by Dino_DNA:
Huh, that seems to work. Though with that port Im only seeing 500 MBps read times. I dont understand why it wouldn't work with on the 20 Mbps port. Is that too fast for games? What do you mean when you say "less strenuous" ? I appreciate the solution but the speed is such a sacrifice...
It's not too fast for games, but it's too fast for *something*. It could be a driver, firmware or hardware issue. Check if there's a BIOS update available, check if there's a drive firmware update available in WD's software (if so, don't do it over the misbehaving port).
I used the word "strenuous", because higher speed equals higher load, whether electrical, thermal or computational.

I see on photos of R16 that it also has 10Gbps ports, try those too.

Understood. I did move it over to the 10Gbps port and its running well there. Read Speed is back up to that ports range. At the same time though, I freed up one port and powered down a couple of the ports on my USB3 hub. That hub is powered by the comp so I imagine thats part of that load you were mentioning, Either way, things are much better now. I appreciate your help and I will keep an eye out for any firmware/driver updates. Thanks again!