Gaming off a flashdrive?

[tJuggernaut29]

Hello,

I recently bought a new laptop, but it only has a small SSD, leaving no room for games.

i do however have a 128 GB usb 3.0 flashdrive.

so if i install a game, like GTA 5, on the flashdrive, can i still play it well?

is it even possible to install a game on the flashdrive, or what about installing steam as well on the drive?

also how much will the flash drive bottleneck performance, and is that such an issue that it is unplayable? 

i know that the drive is fast due to having a buffer sort of thing, and once the buffer gets full, the write speeds are much slower. is this an issue?

 

Thanks

 

[ARikozuM]

Most games should work fine, but open-world or large map games may show latency or bandwidth issues as textures and files get sent over USB.

[r4tch3t]

Go for it. It'll work but you may experience random slowdowns. You can have multiple steam install locations so plug the drive in, transfer/download a game to the drive and see how well it works.

Also you should be able to upgrade the ssd.

[spicy memeboi]

Hi.

I've actually run a whole OS off a flash drive (Ubuntu) and it works... Ok for gaming.

To be fair, it was USB 2.0 based. Fps was significantly decreased. But, as yours is USB 3.0, I would see a significantly less drop in performance.

Just search up a way to install steam on it, and you'd (probably) be good to go.

 

-Crinesso

[RyanEsau]

Depends on the game (Probably just avoid online). Don't have any personal experience though. Just happened to watch a video on it. (Just looked over it again)

There's a video that's been done on it, although I think linking of such isn't allowed? So just look for it if you want to see firsthand.

 

so if i install a game, like GTA 5, on the flashdrive, can i still play it well? -- Yes. I'd imagine GTAV would probably have longer loading times though.

 

is it even possible to install a game on the flashdrive, or what about installing steam as well on the drive? -- Yes (I think? I have Steam installed on my 2nd HDD. Don't see why wouldn't work with a flash drive.) /Yes.

 

also how much will the flash drive bottleneck performance, and is that such an issue that it is unplayable? -- Depends on the game, but no particular drawbacks (in playable titles) except loading times being a few seconds longer if at all.

 

I can test GTAV on my USB3 External HDD if just want a personal report on the difference. Found a short video on YouTube but it wasn't much outside of showing they were using a external and then driving a bit in the game.

[tJuggernaut29]

2 minutes ago, RyanEsau said:

I can test GTAV on my USB3 External HDD if just want a personal report on the difference. Found a short video on YouTube but it wasn't much outside of showing they were using a external and then driving a bit in the game.

so if it is possible, is it as simple as changing the file destination to be in the flashdrive when installing steam and the game, or is there other things i need to change?

the drive is already formatted in NTFS instead of FAT32

[RyanEsau]

1 minute ago, tJuggernaut29 said:

so if it is possible, is it as simple as changing the file destination to be in the flashdrive when installing steam and the game, or is there other things i need to change?

the drive is already formatted in NTFS instead of FAT32

Yes. You can just change the location during the install.

 

[minibois]

Hardware Canucks did a video on this, some of the bigger games experienced some stuttering.

I personally did this in the past (with some very simple older games) and it worked just fine. So it's just gonna depends on what games you're gonna be playing and what flash drive.