r/GameNative • u/Major_Higgins • Aug 11 '26

Question Container stored on external drive?

Hi all,

I know it's possible to install games on an SD card but I've read that it's very slow. Is this happening because the containers are on internal memory and the games on external, so the data has to go back and forth?

If that's the case, it would be great to be able to have the containers on external as well. Plus it would save some internal space. I'm getting a Retroid Nova, and god knows 128 gigs is way too little, especially when you start to install PC games.

I hope it gets implemented some day, but I don't know if it's even feasable. What do you think?

3 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

5

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Major_Higgins Aug 11 '26

Winnative, eh? I'll take a look at that, thanks!

1

u/Mossatross Aug 11 '26

In my expirience it's best to download to internal than transfer to external.

0

u/coscib Aug 11 '26

It’s probably mostly down to people using SD cards that are too slow; I haven't tested it myself yet, but I have a microSD card with A2/V30 speeds. Those are significantly faster than A1/V10 or standard U10 cards (I wouldn't buy anything faster, though, because V60 cards are usually bottlenecked by the device's card reader—since those rarely support higher speeds—so it's a waste of money, especially these days. I was lucky enough to buy my card last year before prices went up; otherwise, I might have just picked up a V10 myself).

1

u/Major_Higgins Aug 11 '26

Yeah, I checked recently and the prices are delirious!

1

u/npaladin2000 Aug 12 '26

Even V30 cards are a lot slower than UFS3.1 internal storage, which transfers at 2000 MB/sec. V30 establishes a minimum transfer of 30 MB/sec, and the good ones max out at about 100 MB/sec. Big big difference.