Is running games from an HDD a good idea?

[bigheroalone]

Hi guys. My laptop's storage was running out of space recently because of the games I downloaded. But then, I remembered that I have an not in-use 500 GB 5400 RPM HDD that I took out from my old laptop. I put the HDD in to my newer laptop (Which has an usable 2.5" Disk drive space with a SATA cable). Then to test it, I put Genshin Impact's all 73 GB game files to the HDD. When played for a little to test it, the results were mixed. The game requires a lot of things to load, which puts huge amounts of load to the disk drive. When the game first opened, it was a combination of AWFUL and TERRIBLE (awfrible) because it took AGES to load and get in the game. After that, it was somewhat fine. The in-game load times are slower but not that huge. Overall experience was fine. But if the game needs an huge load from game files (such as teleporting too far away in-game) it was very slow again.

My question is; is this gonna be the same case with other games (that has >25 GB worth of game files) that I'm planning to put on the HDD?

And the games that I'm planning to put on the HDD are:

- League of Legends
- VALORANT
- eFootball 2023
- The Sims 4
- Fall Guys
- Fortnite
- PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS
- Rocket League

 

Thanks for your replies...

[Radium_Angel]

Probably, esp if the game has to access files on the HDD in a regular occurrence.

[Shimejii]

Do not put Fortnite, Pub G on the HDD if you can help it. Battle royales are kind of pretty meh on HDD's. Other games should be fine ish.

[gen_angry]

It depends. Many games from the 'last console generation' were designed around a slow laptop HDD because that's what the PS4/XB1 have in them at stock. Games with those optimizations will run a whole lot nicer than those without, aside from maybe a long load at the start.

 

The smaller titles like League, fall guys, rocket league will likely be fine. Those were designed to run on just about anything, loads most of everything at once and have at it. Sims 4 is an older game and aside from a big load at the start - should be fine as well once you're in. Maybe keep the BRs on the SSD since there will likely be loading in matches. Not sure about efootball.

 

Ive never played Genshin but I'd wager a game where you have to do additional loading while in game should stay on the SSD.

 

 

[bigheroalone]

thanks for your replies. I think I'm gonna put the League of Legends, The Sims 4, Fall Guys, Fortnite, PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and Rocket League to the HDD. The Genhsin Impact, Valorant and eFootball still stays in the internal M.2 SDD. hope that they don't suck too hard

[PDifolco]

4 minutes ago, bigheroalone said:

thanks for your replies. I think I'm gonna put the League of Legends, The Sims 4, Fall Guys, Fortnite, PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and Rocket League to the HDD. The Genhsin Impact, Valorant and eFootball still stays in the internal M.2 SDD. hope that they don't suck too hard

A 500GB SSD is like $20, that's a couple pizzas... why bother with an old HDD??

[bigheroalone]

5 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

A 500GB SSD is like $20, that's a couple pizzas... why bother with an old HDD??

maybe I can think of buying a 500GB SATA SSD next time

 

[bigheroalone]

Thank you guys for all your helps and replies

and I know its out of topic but I don't want to open a new thread for this.

1. Is there a built-in uninstaller for games that downloaded from Riot Client?
2. Why the heck Riot Client is 11.6 GB?

[Agall]

5 minutes ago, bigheroalone said:

Thank you guys for all your helps and replies

and I know its out of topic but I don't want to open a new thread for this.

1. Is there a built-in uninstaller for games that downloaded from Riot Client?
2. Why the heck Riot Client is 11.6 GB?

I generally recommend not even having an HDD plugged into a gaming system, since I've seen some niche scenarios where an HDD is causing an unusual amount of input latency from CPU interrupt signals just operating in the background.

 

Anything that *needs* an HDD should be segregated from other functions, like NAS or such, or be removable.

[SorryBella]

7 hours ago, bigheroalone said:

- League of Legends
- VALORANT
- eFootball 2023
- The Sims 4
- Fall Guys
- Fortnite
- PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS
- Rocket League

heavy +1 on @Shimejii suggestion to put Fortnite on SSD. They keep randomly doing a shader compile mid loading to a queue and ive been caught so many times with my pants down "afking" at the edge of the map when the fact to the matter is the game didnt fucking load for me with the slog of an HDD i have. So i moved it to my SSD and the trouble solves itself.

[Mark Kaine]

On 6/7/2023 at 8:37 PM, PDifolco said:

A 500GB SSD is like $20, that's a couple pizzas... why bother with an old HDD??

yeah, sure (a pretty bad ssd tho) but i dont get the fuss tbh, i have a 8tb wd "black" (and a 6tb toshiba x300 or something)  and even though external they're just fine for games... especially the wd black is crazy fast (has a huge cache)

 

 

personally i prefer the smaller laptop hdds tbh, as i can connect them over SATA -> USB cable, no need for a stupid enclosure  or external  power, but objectively the two 3.5 ones are a bit faster (and bigger obviously) 

 

 

On 6/7/2023 at 8:52 PM, Agall said:

I generally recommend not even having an HDD plugged into a gaming system, since I've seen some niche scenarios where an HDD is causing an unusual amount of input latency from CPU interrupt signals just operating in the background.

 

Anything that *needs* an HDD should be segregated from other functions, like NAS or such, or be removable.

true that, there isnt a spinning rust drive going into my pc, but outside is just fine as long the drive is good quality! i also have an old toshiba SSHD, which is imo the best hard drive ever *especially* for gaming.

[Mark Kaine]

On 6/8/2023 at 4:09 AM, SorryClaire said:

ive been caught so many times with my pants down "afking" at the edge of the map when the fact to the matter is the game didnt fucking load for me

yeah, even back in ps3 days mmo players had ssds... so did i...  especially for installs and "loading" multiplayer maps its a huge advantage even though the ps3 didn't even max out a sata ssd, still worth it.

 

HOWEVER as said above for the vast majority of games i just don't see a difference to my external mechanical drives  -- i tried WoW and that was laggy as hell but im not sure  a ssd would actually solve that, not too interested in the game so i wont actually sacrifice space on my internal sdds for it, seems kinda boring/weird... (i only wanted to play to get OW coins anyway lol)

[PDifolco]

3 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah, sure (a pretty bad ssd tho) but i dont get the fuss tbh, i have a 8tb wd "black" (and a 6tb toshiba x300 or something)  and even though external they're just fine for games... especially the wd black is crazy fast (has a huge cache)

 

 

personally i prefer the smaller laptop hdds tbh, as i can connect them over SATA -> USB cable, no need for a stupid enclosure  or external  power, but objectively the two 3.5 ones are a bit faster (and bigger obviously) 

 

 

true that, there isnt a spinning rust drive going into my pc, but outside is just fine as long the drive is good quality! i also have an old toshiba SSHD, which is imo the best hard drive ever *especially* for gaming.

Even the crappiest SSD is way faster and more reliable than any HDD...

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, PDifolco said:

Even the crappiest SSD is way faster and more reliable than any HDD...

Kingston A400 enters the chat...

 

 

(no really if you look on paper sure, but a lot of cheap ssds become *extremely* slow and unreliable after a while... my Kingston A400 is slower than floppy disk for example lol)

[PDifolco]

13 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Kingston A400 enters the chat...

 

 

(no really if you look on paper sure, but a lot of cheap ssds become *extremely* slow and unreliable after a while... my Kingston A400 is slower than floppy disk for example lol)

Huh, didn't know it could be that bad.. OTOH my trusty Samsung 960 is still up and running after years of service !

[Mark Kaine]

13 hours ago, PDifolco said:

Huh, didn't know it could be that bad.. OTOH my trusty Samsung 960 is still up and running after years of service !

Yeah, that Kingston is infamous,  no dram cache and extremely cheap controller,  hence these things didn't last long on average (and thats just an example of actually bad ssd) 

 

 

Well a good ssd will last very long of course, but there are still 30 yo hard-drive working just fine too.

 

Here's my fav ,Seagate ide-xt. That sound!