internal vs external HDD's speeds?

[SirYanthon]

hey, so i have a 512gb m.2 ssd for my OS and main softwares i use daily like web browser and video edditing software, and then i have a usb3.0 4TB external HDD, and have yet to buy any internal sata HDD's. basically i was wondering what difference it really makes to have a software on one or the other, specifically with requards to video games. lets say i have gta5 installed on the external HDD, i know that would make it take longer to load the game in the first place, but would it in any way affect the actual gameplay? i suppose with games like minecraft it might since the game continues to load the map from the harddrive as you move around in the world. my other concern then is would this be bad enough to notice a drop in performance? and would buying an internal sata hdd be any better than the usb 3.0 one? im asking in all theoretical situations because i dont have the time to test it myself, and dont want to be installing games on my m.2ssd because i frequently have to uninstall games to make room for new ones, and then switch back when i wanna play the other one and such and i dont wanna wear it out. also, im not sure if i should buy internal hdd's first, or if i can save up for my 4k monitor first

[Electronics Wizardy]

Internal vs external will be about the same speeds(interl is a bit faster due to the loweroverhead of no haveing to use usb)

 

Id just stick with the external hdd.

[Joe_MacDougall]

3 minutes ago, EdgieHippie said:

would buying an internal sata hdd be any better than the usb 3.0 one?

SATA 3 caps out at 600MB/s and USB 3.0 caps out at 640MB/s. Hard drives never get anywhere close to those limits so in theory it shouldn't make a difference.

[SirYanthon]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Internal vs external will be about the same speeds(interl is a bit faster due to the loweroverhead of no haveing to use usb)

 

Id just stick with the external hdd.

actually that kinda makes sense cause i just looked up the speeds and i guess sata caps at 6gb/s and usb3.0 caps at about 5gb/s, dunno why i didnt think of that before

[Mira Yurizaki]

As long as you're using USB 3.0, there's almost no perceptible performance hit. I occasionally run games off my external drive because I don't have enough in my SSD or I only wanted to play it for a bit for some reason or another.

 

Just as a fun bit though, you can play GTA V on a hard drive attached via gigabit ethernet.

[SirYanthon]

1 minute ago, Joe_MacDougall said:

SATA 3 caps out at 600MB/s and USB 3.0 caps out at 640MB/s. Hard drives never get anywhere close to those limits so in theory it shouldn't make a difference.

lol you beat me too it. thats a huge relief that someone else agrees except i guess i got my numbers way wrong O_o

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, EdgieHippie said:

actually that kinda makes sense cause i just looked up the speeds and i guess sata caps at 6gb/s and usb3.0 caps at about 5gb/s, dunno why i didnt think of that before

There is more than that. USB isn't that efficent of a protocol, and there is overhead and will slow it down. Still performs about the same as hdds are slow.

[SirYanthon]

Just now, wrathoftheturkey said:

how does that work? Like, a separate PC?

im wondering about this aswell

[Mira Yurizaki]

12 minutes ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

how does that work? Like, a separate PC?

 

11 minutes ago, EdgieHippie said:

im wondering about this aswell

I network mapped my NAS to look like a regular hard drive and I pointed Steam to it.