External HDD/SSD for games

[NineWingedDuck]

I've purchased the Lenovo y-700, with the 256GB M.2 Slot. However, I obviously can not install a lot games. So I figured I would upgrade it, but it turns out it requires a drive cage and a special sata cable, which they don't sell in my country(Norway).

I'm wondering if I can use a external drive to play games, without huge loading times. 

What kind of bottleneck do I get if I use an external vs internal drive, both SSD and HDD using USB 3.0 (The laptop does not have a USB Type-C :/)

Should I get a HDD or a SSD?

[saladcrack]

It shouldn't affect load times munch if at all.  I have most of my games on an external drive for my Xbox One and it works like normal.  And SSD or HDD depends on how much you play because if you can fit your games onto and SSD with a bit of overhead you should be fine but if you think you'll have 1-2 TB of games then get an HDD.

[SuperShermanTanker]

I store my games on a 1tb external hdd on my laptop because my laptop is limited to M2 SSDs and it's over $300 USD to upgrade to a 1tb one from the existing 512gb one so I use the external HDD and even though it's a 5400rpm one it's not that bad and I have only seen bad loading times in rise of the toumb raider where it took 20-30 seconds to load but otherwise it's pretty ok with load times ranging from 7-20 seconds depending on the game and 20-30 seconds on the real big/long loading time games such as rise of the toumb raider also I'm using my drive over usb 3.0 which is almost as fast as the sata connection and doesn't bottleneck the read and write speeds of my drive

[Trevor87]

You should be good with 3.0 usb Hard drive. 

[Supporterino]

Yeah I agree with the guys above me. You should be aware that the drive you buy is USB 3.0, because 2.0 can create A bottleneck and pick an acceptable HDD not the cheapest one you can find. Then you should be fine with loading times.