Switching hard drives

[nokre8]

Okay so basically my friend has incredibly slow internet speed. I have decent speeds. He's trying to download GTA V but because its a large download, it will literally take him a couple weeks to download. I was wondering if I could just take his hard drive and switch it with the one in my PC and download it with my internet. Is this a safe thing to do/will it work? I am only worried about some kind of reformatting occuring etc.

[meenmeen1103]

Would be best for your friend to take the whole system to your house and download it.

[Sauron]

You can use an external drive to copy the data from the gta folder (usually under steam\steamapps\common\) from your computer to his. Steam will recognize the existing data and will not require him to download it again.

[iRileyx]

Is he using wireless to download it to his PC? he could just have a crappy wifi adapter/dongle. try having him connect it straight to the router and see if the speeds are any faster.

This is what i did to download gta, in my room i was getting 10-20Mbps, moved my pc into the living room and plugged straight into my router, was getting anywhere from 120-150Mbps whilst downloading it.

[nokre8]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

You can use an external drive to copy the data from the gta folder (usually under steam\steamapps\common\) from your computer to his. Steam will recognize the existing data and will not require him to download it again.

its not the steam version of GTA

[nokre8]

1 hour ago, RKRiley said:

Is he using wireless to download it to his PC? he could just have a crappy wifi adapter/dongle. try having him connect it straight to the router and see if the speeds are any faster.

This is what i did to download gta, in my room i was getting 10-20Mbps, moved my pc into the living room and plugged straight into my router, was getting anywhere from 120-150Mbps whilst downloading it.

he just has really bad internet. he lives in the middle of no where

[nokre8]

1 hour ago, meenmeen1103 said:

Would be best for your friend to take the whole system to your house and download it.

its not exactly option...

[meenmeen1103]

2 hours ago, nokre8 said:

its not exactly option...

If the friend can afford to not have a hard drive in his system, rendering it useless for the amount of time it takes to download the game onto the hard drive, what would be the difference in not having the system at his/her house at all compared to not having it be usable but be at his/her house? Unless this friend has a spare hard drive with an OS also already loaded on it to use for the same amount of time it would take to download the game onto the main drive. The thing is, it's not a complete executable file like an mp3 file that can be played at any computer, it "partially installs into the OS". I don't feel like it's worth going through the Windows re-activation process twice on the friend's drive (which would need to be done once to plug that drive into your system, download/install, then again to get it working well in his system).

[nokre8]

53 minutes ago, meenmeen1103 said:

If the friend can afford to not have a hard drive in his system, rendering it useless for the amount of time it takes to download the game onto the hard drive, what would be the difference in not having the system at his/her house at all compared to not having it be usable but be at his/her house? Unless this friend has a spare hard drive with an OS also already loaded on it to use for the same amount of time it would take to download the game onto the main drive. The thing is, it's not a complete executable file like an mp3 file that can be played at any computer, it "partially installs into the OS". I don't feel like it's worth going through the Windows re-activation process twice on the friend's drive (which would need to be done once to plug that drive into your system, download/install, then again to get it working well in his system).

 ???

what i was possibly going to do was switch out my hard drive for his and download the game. he is comfortable not having his computer for a day. how i thought it would be like was that my computer boots from his hard drive so it would be as if i was on his computer. my hard drive would not be in the system. not sure if thats how it works which is why im here. also it is not very clear to me as to why we may have to reinstall the os?

[meenmeen1103]

18 minutes ago, nokre8 said:

 ???

what i was possibly going to do was switch out my hard drive for his and download the game. he is comfortable not having his computer for a day. how i thought it would be like was that my computer boots from his hard drive so it would be as if i was on his computer. my hard drive would not be in the system. not sure if thats how it works which is why im here. also it is not very clear to me as to why we may have to reinstall the os?

Well, I know windows will de-activate its license when switched from one system to another. How soon it does so after booting from the non-original system, and whether the game download/installation requires the windows OS to be activated is a different issue. I'm also not sure, in the case that his drive even boots in your system (because of drivers) and does de-activate the OS but you manage to get the game downloaded and installed, how hard it would be to re-activate the OS once back in his system or if it's automatic. Basically, what you describe wouldn't necessarily be a plug & play thing, which is why if he can go without not having his drive/computer for a day it's much easier to just have his whole system over to download/install. 

[Sauron]

9 hours ago, nokre8 said:

its not the steam version of GTA

Ok, what version is it? Chances are the same can be done, just with a different folder.

[TheLaserCucumber]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Ok, what version is it? Chances are the same can be done, just with a different folder.

If it's not the steam version, it's the version from rockstar themselves. I have this version too, and I already tried it. This won't work there.