External Hard Drives Vs. Internal Hard Drives for Games

Inside of a hard drive.

An internal hard drive is usually the preferred place to install a game, although under some circumstances, an external drive can be used. This is not recommended, and more intensive games will be bottlenecked, and others will not install altogether.

Function

Hard drives are used to store the game data, and any accompanying media.

Identification

External hard drives are located outside of the computer case, and are connected by USB. Internal hard drives are inside the case, and connected by a SATA port.

Size

External drives are essentially the same as an internal drive, but it is self contained. Because of this, internal and external drives are available in the same capacity, ranging from 320 gigabytes to two terabytes. Games can take up as much as 10 GB or more each.

Features

Installing a game to an external drive allows it to be separate from the operating system. If the computer crashes, the game data will be not be lost.

Drawbacks

External hard drives are slower, due to the limitations of USB. This can cause games to freeze and lag.

Considerations

As of 2010, USB 3.0 has become a new standard, which will allow external hard drives to have data transfer rates similar to SATA. This will require a compatible motherboard and hard drive.

References

• Ask Leo: Can I install programs on an external drive?

Resources

• "PC World": Can you install a program on an external drive?; Lincoln Spector; 2008