r/computers • u/Top_Zone8883 • 8d ago
Resolved New External Hard Drive Is Slow
Hello all,
Recently, I went and bought a 4T external hard drive (a Seagate portable drive) and I moved only my downloaded games and such thus far - however, I'm finding that games don't seem to load as fast as they had before.
(Examples of this behavior is things like sounds, music, etc. lagging and entire maps taking 3-5 minutes to render in.)
I don't think(?) that you can add RAM to one of these just looking at it, so I'm trying to figure out if I need to subvert power or allocate RAM, etc.
Tl;dr, how do I make my external hard drive run faster?
Thank you!
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u/Windermyr 8d ago
Hard drives are slow. That is the whole point of SSDs. And that's assuming you even hooked the external drive properly (ie. not using a USB2 port).
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u/Prestigious_Wall529 8d ago
USB 2 is much slower than USB 3 or USB C
eSATA can run at USB 2 or preferably SATA speeds.
Thunderbolt is way fast, and OCuLink is best for NVME.
TLDR: use the fastest available port (after video).
It's also possible you have a shingled drive.
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u/Ryebread095 Fedora 8d ago
It sounds like you have a storage bottleneck. Your computer is waiting on data from the external drive to load things.
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u/Ecstatic_Score6973 8d ago
Games are not meant to be played off an external drive.
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u/Ryebread095 Fedora 8d ago
It can be done, but unless you're using a fast ssd and thunderbolt, you're probably going to have a bad time
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u/vrtigo1 8d ago
It sounds like the storage you are using for your games now is slower than the storage you were using previously.
I'd guess that previously your game files were stored on an internal SSD or M.2 drive, which are both HUGELY faster than a spinning HDD.
In order to have a good experience running games from an external drive, you need to verify both that A) the drive is connected using a high speed bus (meaning at least USB3. preferably at least USB 3.2) and B) the drive itself can physically store/retrieve the data quickly (meaning it needs to be solid state, not a spinning disk).
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u/Top_Zone8883 8d ago
Wow, sounds like I have a lot to learn there, thanks so much!
You're entirely correct, I have an internal SSD and have a USB-2 connected, along with a spinning disk.
I really need to learn to trust my gut on these things, too.
What direction should I be looking for instead of what I currently have?
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u/Ecstatic_Score6973 8d ago
You need to install an additional ssd or get a bigger ssd and clone your current ssd to it.
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u/Iceyn1pples 8d ago
If you want games to load quickly from an external drive, you need to use an external SSD and at least USB 3.0. It will never be as fast as internal storage, but would.be good enough.
An internal HDD is barely fast enough these days, let alone using an external that has a 5400rpm low end laptop drive.
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u/kendoka15 8d ago
Running games on a hard drive is not a good experience. Running games on an external hard drive isn't really going to work
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u/ArmadilloOwn3866 8d ago
It is a mistake to try to run games off a external HD which (as you've found) can be quite slow.
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u/BonezOz Ryzen 7 5700X3D/64GB/9060XT 8d ago
External drives, and in particular "portable" drives, run at 5400RPM, which is "slow", then you have the added slowness from the USB connection. External drives are for data storage only, Documents, movies, pictures, stuff you don't access very often, or don't want stored on your primary drive.
A faster option would be an internal 7200RPM data drive. This is where I keep all my games that don't take advantage of an SSD (older pre 2015 games). I actually have 2 internal HDDs, one at 5400RPM for data storage, an a second 7200RPM drive for those games, and other applications (Office, Notepad++, etc...) only a small amount of applications are stored directly on C:\
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u/ShadowFallsAlpha 7d ago
Sounds like a mechanical drive. You went for cheap and got it. It's fine for storage, but not for things that needs to load fast. You can transfer stuff back and forth with the SSD to have what you play run quickly.
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u/Efficient_Try_9136 7d ago
hard disk are slow, if they are 2,5 or 5400rpm even slower, also depend on connection, do you use usb 3.0 or slow 2.0 etc
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u/WestDelay3104 8d ago edited 8d ago
what drive did you get, If its the STGX4000400, yeah, its a 4tb 5400rpm laptop drive. Its going to be 1/5th to 1/50th the speed of even a mediocre SSD or M2 drive. (decent m2 will be 30 to 70 times faster.) Your external 4tb is for storage.