Is a usb 3.0 hdd fast enough for games

jamese669 · August 12, 2015

will a usb. 3.0 hdd be fast enough to run games from or will it be to slow to for games to run decently.

DaftBehemoth · August 12, 2015

Games will run fine. It's the load times that will suffer. If you can deal with longer load times, it'll be fine. Just not ideal.

ictdude1 · August 12, 2015

it will be absolutely fine, i was transfering data from a usb 3.0 hard drive today and it was going at 185mbps which is the same speed you would see from an internal hard drive using sata

SnafuPossum · August 13, 2015

Any normal external hdd will not saturate usb 3.0. Something like samsung's external ssd's probably will but you more then likely will not notice a slow down from it.

Captain_WD · August 13, 2015

will a usb. 3.0 hdd be fast enough to run games from or will it be to slow to for games to run decently.

Hey there jamese669,

Games generally rely on the storage's performance only for the loading times and autosaves. FPS and graphics are not affected at all. Do have in mind that some games cannot be installed on external drives but for the ones that can the USB3.0 port should allow good-enough speed for problem-free gaming. It would depend on the particular drive itself.

Captan_WD.