External SSD Worth It?

[Bogart]

So I only have a 1 TB Internal SSD and am regularly having to uninstall games to trade for what I currently want to play and my heart kinda sinks when I see a game over 100 GB so am just wondering whether getting an External Gaming SSD would fix my issue, something like 4+ TB. Anyone have any experience with them/comments?

EDIT: Updated some info. Also I don't want to open my PC up hence the external SSD.

[Abaddon the Despoiler]

It would work. But my personal preference is to just open the tower and stick another drive in there.

[ナルゴ]

Yes.

[Vox]

Why not just replace the 1TB drive with something better? Internal is always going to be quicker.

[Caldari Ghost]

I've got a Samsung t7 that works pretty good, a 4 TB is going to be a lot more expensive than a 4 TB external HDD though

[joco]

I purchased an external SSD to play Starfield. I gave it a go and returned the drive for a refund and put in an internal SSD for much, much better performance.

[Caldari Ghost]

Actually yeah, if your issue is games that individually take up space in the hundreds of GB then those games will probably need a faster internal drive to load properly. If you just have lots of older games or games that aren't super reliant on giant textures and such than an external storage is fine.

[vkobe]

Originally posted by Bogart:

So I only have a 1 TB HD and am regularly having to uninstall games to trade for what I currently want to play and my heart kinda sinks when I see a game over 100 GB so am just wondering whether getting an External Gaming SSD would fix my issue, something like 4+ TB. Anyone have any experience with them/comments?

of course

they run faster stuff than your internal hdd

only internal ssd are superior to external ssd, but external ssd let you manage more tb, so you can run big game like gta 6 smoothly even if gta 6 is 1tb game

and what i see it is external ssd going to have more tb than external hdd, currently external hdd ceiling is 5gb, external ssd ceiling is 4tb, so i expect samsung going to release external ssd over 5 tb in 2026

after you can of course use old school hdd of 22tb like easystore, but they are big, bulky and less reliable than current external ssd and external hdd

[vkobe]

Originally posted by Vox:

Why not just replace the 1TB drive with something better? Internal is always going to be quicker.

lack of space, my motherboard can only house 3 internal ssd

for external it doesnt have limit, so it work if i use 10 external ssd

and anyway internal ssd is more to run OS, but for video game a samsung nvme external work well to run any game

[talemore]

No

[Lemur]

Get an internal drive. Nonetheless SSD is notably faster than HDD. So no matter what get a SDD.

[Stormer]

Get an internal one if possible external ones aren’t great for program storage

And opening your pc isn’t nearly as big of a deal as it sounds initially, plus storage drive installation is fairly easy (literally just plug in a cable or snap it in for newer ones) as long as you buy the correct parts

[MinionJoe]

Originally posted by Stormer:

Get an internal one if possible external ones aren’t great for program storage

I was going to say an external one is really only good for storage. I wouldn't want to try and run any programs off of an external drive (SSD or HDD) because of the I/O speed limitations.

[talemore]

The issue is that you external the harddrive to a cable who limit the data transfer.

Neither are any major benefits. The SSD is of less quality than a mechanic. It's a giant memory stick. Once the drive dies, it dies.

[Ysosrscat]

Originally posted by Bogart:

So I only have a 1 TB Internal SSD and am regularly having to uninstall games to trade for what I currently want to play and my heart kinda sinks when I see a game over 100 GB so am just wondering whether getting an External Gaming SSD would fix my issue, something like 4+ TB. Anyone have any experience with them/comments?

EDIT: Updated some info. Also I don't want to open my PC up hence the external SSD.

Internal is superior but if you don't want to you don't want to.

Anyways, 4TB for $200 is fine for anything but the most heavy texture streaming games.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CMDJXZ19

Samsung's internals comes with the drive clone software if you ever want to do the internal upgrade, just have to buy a dock or usb enclosure.

Originally posted by vkobe:

Originally posted by Vox:

Why not just replace the 1TB drive with something better? Internal is always going to be quicker.

lack of space, my motherboard can only house 3 internal ssd

for external it doesnt have limit, so it work if i use 10 external ssd

and anyway internal ssd is more to run OS, but for video game a samsung nvme external work well to run any game

Externals do have limits way below what you'd imagine, esp if you only have a single usb controller chip on your motherboard like most. The device/end point limits aren't measured the way you'd imagine, and there is the power issue.

External can work if you have a good powered hub, the ones with 72watt+~ power supplies for 13-16 ports are good if you don't want trouble, but tend to be just 5Gbps, I've only seen reasonably priced 4 powered ports for 10Gbps.

They also sell usb controller cards with multiple controllers so you don't end up dividing up bandwidth.

I have 16TB ssd internal, and some externals for junk and backup.

NVME usb has superior power savings, I stopped using external sata ssd because they just sit there cooking.

[HypersleepyNaputunia]

12tb hdd, usb 100 dollars or so, transfer games between drives when you want to switch