Octopus Overlords

Hi - I'm thinking about getting an external hard drive to augment a laptop. I'm curioius about the usb connection though. Can you install a game on the external drive and play it well or should games only be on internal, non-usb hard drives?

thanks!

Meghan wrote:Hi - I'm thinking about getting an external hard drive to augment a laptop. I'm curioius about the usb connection though. Can you install a game on the external drive and play it well or should games only be on internal, non-usb hard drives?

thanks!

The USB drives are slower to access. I would move my pictures and music and such to it, and keep the games on the internal drive when possible.

I have an external on my notebook PC and when I researched it, going FireWire over USB 2.0 was definitely the way to go. I don't have any troubles with external software, although I have to admit that the second drive is maily used for data as opposed to executables.

More hard drives for everyone!

~Neal

The Meal wrote:More hard drives for everyone!

Yesterday, I brought my total home storage capacity up to 670GB by adding a WD 160GB drive. Smoove picked up the drive for $70. Which is sick. Just plain sick. I noticed that Circuit City is selling 80GB for $30 or something. That's just wrong.

Back on topic - when I put my external drive together, I didn't have USB 2.0, so it was between USB 1.0 and Firewire. That was easy, and I went with Firewire. The thing that stinks is that regardless, the drive needs it's own power cable, which is a pain in the keister.

Like The Meal though, I use the external drive for data storage, not for installing apps or games to.

RunningMn9 wrote: Smoove picked up the drive for $70. Which is sick. Just plain sick.

Back on topic - when I put my external drive together, I didn't have USB 2.0, so it was between USB 1.0 and Firewire. That was easy, and I went with Firewire. The thing that stinks is that regardless, the drive needs it's own power cable, which is a pain in the keister.

Like The Meal though, I use the external drive for data storage, not for installing apps or games to.

Yeah. I've got a USB 2.0 cage that use to house a 140GB hard drive. I put the 160 in last night and made it my new system drive. The USB drive will now hold music and game patches - perfect for easy mobility and LAN gaming.

I got the USB cage from New Egg for under $30. This isn't the one I got, but the same idea:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDe ... 017&depa=0

I think I might invest in another type of case that's a bit more durable - the one I have servicable, but a little flimsy.

thanks for the info - I hadn't even considered firewire but now I'll need to take another look at the laptops I'm considering.

Smoove, what do the cages besides look cool?

Meghan wrote:Smoove, what do the cages besides look cool?

I use "cage" to describe it but it's more like a plastic case. Cage just makes it sound manly. The sell for me on the "cage" was that you could put any type of powered device into and attach it via USB 2.0 - a hard drive, CDRW, DVDRW - whatever. It just has a power supply and cable conneciton inside the bottom frame piece.

All you need to do is plug it into an outlet, attach the USB cable and you've got instant computer geek goodness.

RunningMn9 wrote:

The Meal wrote:More hard drives for everyone!

Yesterday, I brought my total home storage capacity up to 670GB by adding a WD 160GB drive. Smoove picked up the drive for $70. Which is sick. Just plain sick. I noticed that Circuit City is selling 80GB for $30 or something. That's just wrong.

Back on topic - when I put my external drive together, I didn't have USB 2.0, so it was between USB 1.0 and Firewire. That was easy, and I went with Firewire. The thing that stinks is that regardless, the drive needs it's own power cable, which is a pain in the keister.

Like The Meal though, I use the external drive for data storage, not for installing apps or games to.

You don't want it sucking power from your computer. It is a pain but much better to use external power.

On a side note I got a new Buslink drive in today that uses an encryption key. Now I can transport my porno without worrying about you thugs trying to steal it

Maybe This should go on my Christmas list.

And just in case that's not big enough for you, there's always a little bit more.

Rip wrote:You don't want it sucking power from your computer. It is a pain but much better to use external power.

On a side note I got a new Buslink drive in today that uses an encryption key. Now I can transport my porno without worrying about you thugs trying to steal it

Bah, who needs to transport the pr0n? I just dump it into my 1TB encrypted RAID-5 partition on my Gentoo file server box.

Personally, I want one of the small 2.5" external drives that is usb powered. I've got a 160gb 3.5 drive but it's kind of a pain to transport because you have to take the power supply, too. If 2.5" drives weren't so much more expensive, I'd definitely go with a 2.5 over a 3.5. Smaller size and no brick to lug around.

I'd also make sure to get a drive with both a firewire and usb 2.0 connection. Not all computers are going to have firewire. Especially when you go to your parents house and want to show them pictures or listen to music.

I have a USB 2.0 drive and it's pretty quick. I remember linking up my new laptop to my old to copy files over firewire (about the same speed), and it was amazingly fast. I doubt if I'd try playing games on it though - i mean some might be okay and it'd be interesting to try, but I wouldn't want to run Far Cry off of it