External Hard Drive speed

[knockout34]

Hi all,

I'm running Steam from my external HD and I wanted to know if this is slowing down the loading/dl rates significantly. When I download a game to it it normally goes at a rate of about 600-800kb/s an occasionally spiking to about 1-1.2 mbps. Does the external hd even affect the dl rates? (This could be for anything not just Steam) Thanks

 

[knockout34]

bump

 

[valtopps]

yes a portable hd that use a usb to connect to your computer will be slower then if it a hd was connected to the motherboard. the usb slows it down!

 

[knockout34]

yes a portable hd that use a usb to connect to your computer will be slower then if it a hd was connected to the motherboard. the usb slows it down!

Would a 7200rpm driver make a difference or would it still bottleneck at the usb port.

 

[jarlmaster47]

Would a 7200rpm driver make a difference or would it still bottleneck at the usb port.

it would still bottleneck. what you would have to do is connect at a usb 3.0 port to prevent full bandwith saturation. even so the usb interface is going to cause a slowdown. sata is where its at

 

[The Chad]

Go to http://www.speedtest.net and run the test there. Comapre that download speed against your download speed on steam.

If the Steam one is much slower then yes, I'd say its bottlenecking.

Also, if you are running the games from the external that will also slow them down.

 

[tyttebøvs]

You need a good internet connection if your usb2 link is going to be the slowest link.