I would only keep data and not apps on a usb drive. Not that it won't work but that USB really stands for Unpredictable Serial Bus and usb is not known for low latency, low latency being what fps games are all about.
esata!
random note: does eSATA support hotplugging?
random note addendum: does SATA support hotplugging?
random note addendum addendum: what is the chance that any SATA hard drive can be hotplugged?
random note 2: usb should have all the bandwidth you need to match the speed of a 7200rpm hard drive
From what I have "heard," running games off of an external is not a great idea. If you wanted to move all of your documents, movies, songs, pictures, porn, etc., onto an external, that makes sense.
I would keep copies of really important stuff on both your Hard Drive and the External, however.
Well, most external harddrives come with 3-5 year warranties. And it's always a good idea to keep copies of stuff because you never know when your harddrive might mess up. You can try keeping copies of stuff online. For example, I use www.box.net I believe they give you 2GB of free storage. Just create a bunch of accounts, and upload all your junk on there.
Not sure what games you're using it for, but most games aren't portable (i.e. entire game in the main folder thus transferable by copy & pasting with no need for installation) so it generally doesn't work.
Tribes 2 is portable. I used to have it on an external and although it's playable via USB 2.0, if I recall correctly the game didn't even exceed 1 gb. You don't need ALL your porn on your HD.
back on topic, i have a few games that i run off my external 500gig for my laptop n they run fine. just depends, i guess, you cant have all the settings cranked up tho cuz it does slow fps, but i wouldnt say by that much.
Comments
random note: does eSATA support hotplugging?
random note addendum: does SATA support hotplugging?
random note addendum addendum: what is the chance that any SATA hard drive can be hotplugged?
random note 2: usb should have all the bandwidth you need to match the speed of a 7200rpm hard drive
I would keep copies of really important stuff on both your Hard Drive and the External, however.
That being said, I don't know if externals have a higher fail rate, but if you have 2 hard drives why not keep copies of the important stuff?
Game on internal.
Not sure what games you're using it for, but most games aren't portable (i.e. entire game in the main folder thus transferable by copy & pasting with no need for installation) so it generally doesn't work.
Tribes 2 is portable. I used to have it on an external and although it's playable via USB 2.0, if I recall correctly the game didn't even exceed 1 gb. You don't need ALL your porn on your HD.
The base game is about 550 MB. But that's no fun. You need skins, voice packs, and scripts to play. My T2 folder is 2.55 GB big ;D
wtf thats huge you must have every skin, texture, and gui there is for t2 haha my t2 folder is only about 900mb..
I don't use GUI. I prefer the standard Tribe 2 GUI