USB External or Internal?

Steven Rimmington · 23 Nov 2019 at 15:02

I have a 512GB nvme drive inside my Laptop and its quickly empty with just 3 games installed.

I have an option to buy a 6tb internal 2.5 mechanical drive, or a USB 3.0 external drive with a desktop size HDD.

My question is; would the speed of the 5400RPM laptop drive be quicker than using an external USB3 drive?

I only need it for game storage so I feel the internal option may be best?

EsaT · 23 Nov 2019 at 21:12

USB3 is capable to lot faster speeds than even latest HDDs, so it doesn't matter if HDD is in the end of USB or SATA cable.
And HDD is always slow compared to any SSD, including SATA SSD.
Especially for games needing that much space HDD will be slow in loading them.
So it would be preferable to have SSD.

Steven Rimmington · 23 Nov 2019 at 21:29

Thanks I have checked a few reviews and USB 3.0 is no different than a internal SATA drive.

Ths cost of a 4TB SSD is well over £300 where a 6
4TB SATA drive is £80. Thats a big difference?

apostolis_kt · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:09

Steven Rimmington said:
Thanks I have checked a few reviews and USB 3.0 is no different than a internal SATA drive.

Ths cost of a 4TB SSD is well over £300 where a 6
4TB SATA drive is £80. Thats a big difference?

That is because of the SSD is a lot faster in access time compared to the mechanical drive. Also 4TB SSDs just started to be somewhat approachable to buy so they don't sell in big numbers and the cost of technology is higher while old mechanical drives are cheap to sell but also slower. In your case depending on the game i would buy an external hdd and keep only the games that i need to load fast on the NVME drive. But single player games shouldn't matter much for example if you have to wait 10 seconds vs 20 seconds for the game to load that is not a big deal.

Steven Rimmington · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:15

apostolis_kt said:
That is because of the SSD is a lot faster in access time compared to the mechanical drive. Also 4TB SSDs just started to be somewhat approachable to buy so they don't sell in big numbers and the cost of technology is higher while old mechanical drives are cheap to sell but also slower. In your case depending on the game i would buy an external hdd and keep only the games that i need to load fast on the NVME drive. But single player games shouldn't matter much for example if you have to wait 10 seconds vs 20 seconds for the game to load that is not a big deal.

I am thinking spending £300 on a SSD for quicker loading times in not good value IMO. I am going to buy an internal 2.5 drive and choose the biggest size for my budget which is £90! I could get a 1TB SSD but the size of games now means it will fill up quickly again. I am having to remove games to install new ones and its becoming tiresome!

andy_mk3 · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:19

Yeah, games are stupidly big now. I have a 512GB & 1TB NVME SSD, and had to add a 2TB drive to allow for more games. I don't have a ton of games either. RDR2 is 112GB alone though.

koolpc · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:22

Dont put all your eggs in one basket either! If drive goes kaput you will lose the lot!

apostolis_kt · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:22

andy_mk3 said:
Yeah, games are stupidly big now. I have a 512GB & 1TB NVME SSD, and had to add a 2TB drive to allow for more games. I don't have a ton of games either. RDR2 is 112GB alone though.

Games get stupidly large lately, prices on ssd better drop faster than they are.

Steven i think the hdd is the best choice it's not worth to buy such an expensive drive just for games. If you didn't have an ssd with the OS in it I would suggest you to get the ssd but now you do have a nice nvme another hdd would do the job for you.

koolpc · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:24

apostolis_kt said:
Games get stupidly large lately, prices on ssd better drop faster than they are.

Steven i think the hdd is the best choice it's not worth to buy such an expensive drive just for games. If you didn't have an ssd with the OS in it I would suggest you to get the ssd but now you do have a nice nvme another hdd would do the job for you.

Agree

Steven Rimmington · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:25

andy_mk3 said:
Yeah, games are stupidly big now. I have a 512GB & 1TB NVME SSD, and had to add a 2TB drive to allow for more games. I don't have a ton of games either. RDR2 is 112GB alone though.

Its mental, I have GTA RDR2 & CODMW installed and I have 50Gb left

Just a little worried as I have not used a mechanical drive in my PC for years, it will only be used for game storage so hopefully I wont notice much, I have been trying the xbox sub for £1 and every game I am having to remove to try a new one.

apostolis_kt · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:35

Steven Rimmington said:
Its mental, I have GTA RDR2 & CODMW installed and I have 50Gb left Just a little worried as I have not used a mechanical drive in years, it will only be used for game storage so hopefully I wont notice much, I have been trying the xbox sub for £1 and every game I am having to remove to try a new one.

I feel you. Yeah get a mechanical drive they are still fine for gaming. Even for loading a game at least the current games you don't get that much of time saved using an ssd. Maybe because also the current consoles are still using HDD's.

I remember ages ago when i didnt have an ssd, i loaded dota 2 and was one of the last ppl to load the game, once i moved that to an ssd i was the first to load the game but then i waited for the others to load so didn't do much.

For me the biggest difference using an ssd was windows, oh boy I cannot go back to mechanical drive windows pc's. I currently have most of my game library on a WD 2tb black drive, and only dota 2 on the 256gb ssd i have with windows. In my future build hopefully by xmas I will have a 2tb nvme ssd which I will use for windows and only the main games but will still use the HDD for the rest of the games because no way I will be playing all in one go.

koolpc · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:40

apostolis_kt said:
I feel you. Yeah get a mechanical drive they are still fine for gaming. Even for loading a game at least the current games you don't get that much of time saved using an ssd. Maybe because also the current consoles are still using HDD's.

I remember ages ago when i didnt have an ssd, i loaded dota 2 and was one of the last ppl to load the game, once i moved that to an ssd i was the first to load the game but then i waited for the others to load so didn't do much.

For me the biggest difference using an ssd was windows, oh boy I cannot go back to mechanical drive windows pc's. I currently have most of my game library on a WD 2tb black drive, and only dota 2 on the 256gb ssd i have with windows. In my future build hopefully by xmas I will have a 2tb nvme ssd which I will use for windows and only the main games but will still use the HDD for the rest of the games because no way I will be playing all in one go.

I like that. Thats what i will do when i get a pc up and running.

Steven Rimmington · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:40

apostolis_kt said:
I feel you. Yeah get a mechanical drive they are still fine for gaming. Even for loading a game at least the current games you don't get that much of time saved using an ssd. Maybe because also the current consoles are still using HDD's.

I remember ages ago when i didnt have an ssd, i loaded dota 2 and was one of the last ppl to load the game, once i moved that to an ssd i was the first to load the game but then i waited for the others to load so didn't do much.

For me the biggest difference using an ssd was windows, oh boy I cannot go back to mechanical drive windows pc's. I currently have most of my game library on a WD 2tb black drive, and only dota 2 on the 256gb ssd i have with windows. In my future build hopefully by xmas I will have a 2tb nvme ssd which I will use for windows and only the main games but will still use the HDD for the rest of the games because no way I will be playing all in one go.

Windows and everyday tasks on a mechanical drive is painfully slow ha! I have an old Lenovo my daughter uses for YouTube and small things like first power up and shutting down you need to leave it a few days

I really want to install a bigger nvme drive but the costs are mental when it will only be used to install games, I will do some tests and see how different the games I have on my nvme drive will compare as I will move them over. Will be interesting

apostolis_kt · 23 Nov 2019 at 22:55

Steven Rimmington said:
Windows and everyday tasks on a mechanical drive is painfully slow ha! I have an old Lenovo my daughter uses for YouTube and small things like first power up and shutting down you need to leave it a few days

I really want to install a bigger nvme drive but the costs are mental when it will only be used to install games, I will do some tests and see how different the games I have on my nvme drive will compare as I will move them over. Will be interesting

That would be the best and easiest benchmark to do. You will see definitely the difference on the ssd being faster in loading and you can see also youtube videos that show the difference but I personally cannot justify the difference. Not for just games anyway.

On the other hand nvme drives have gotten quite cheaper compared to the past, I would never have thought I would get a 2tb one for 240ish.

Quartz · 23 Nov 2019 at 23:50

Steven Rimmington said:
I have an option to buy a 6tb internal 2.5 mechanical drive, or a USB 3.0 external drive with a desktop size HDD.

Buy the internal drive. You can get SSDs that fit. External drives aren't so good because caching gets disabled. They're fine for backups and data transfer, though.

Steven Rimmington said:
I am thinking spending £300 on a SSD for quicker loading times in not good value IMO. I am going to buy an internal 2.5 drive and choose the biggest size for my budget which is £90! I could get a 1TB SSD but the size of games now means it will fill up quickly again.

I think you'll be surprised how far a 1 TB SSD goes. Windows takes up a fair chunk of that 512 GB drive: 16 GB for hibernation, 16 GB for pagefile, and so on. Then there's your user profile with browser cache. Combined that's likely 100 GB already.You don't play that many games at once, do you?

.

Steven Rimmington · 24 Nov 2019 at 00:16

Quartz said:
Buy the internal drive. You can get SSDs that fit. External drives aren't so good because caching gets disabled. They're fine for backups and data transfer, though.

I think you'll be surprised how far a 1 TB SSD goes. Windows takes up a fair chunk of that 512 GB drive: 16 GB for hibernation, 16 GB for pagefile, and so on. Then there's your user profile with browser cache. Combined that's likely 100 GB already.You don't play that many games at once, do you?

.

No I don't play many but I have tried Forza 4 and Dirt 2 both are 90GB in size, plus many more I want to download and play and not have to uninstall and redownload. Maybe 4TB is excessive but a 1TB SSD will be gone in no time then I will be left in the same situation. I'm going to go for a 4TB internal mechanical drive I feel this should be ok for a game drive

I want to try xbox game pass and the origin basic pass.