[SOLVED] External SSD for Gaming on Laptop ISSUE

[ven0m1012]

Hi, I've been on Tom's Hardware and I use the forums often to solve my PC problems so I was hoping someone could help me determine/fix this issue I am having.

I own a Dell Gaming G315 Laptop which I use to play a variety of games on my internal hard drive from League of Legends to Fallout 4 without issue. Recently I bought a $300 SanDisk 2TB Portable SSD (New Gen) from Amazon because my laptop was out of space for my games.

When I play games in my steam library from this SSD, they lag and stop responding repeatedly and this includes in the menus and while playing. This occurs on games like Dragon Age Origins, Dead by Daylight ,Papers Please, Planet Zoo and Sims 4.

I've tried a lot of fixes I've seen from: reinstalling the drivers for the SSD and USB ports, reinstalling all the games, I've tried observing if my Memory gets overloaded but it only goes to 80%, switching to all the different USB ports, and using the USB-C cable instead of the USB.

The two strangest things is that I've run the same games on my brother's laptop, a Dell XPS 15 and he can run them through the SSD without this stuttering/non-responding issue. The other is that I've run It Takes Two and Skyrim for hours on end and never had this non-responding/stuttering issue.

Any insight as to the problem or how to fix it would be great, I'm completely stumped as to what could be causing the issue.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

When I play games in my steam library from this SSD, they lag and stop responding repeatedly...
I've run It Takes Two and Skyrim for hours on end and never had this non-responding/stuttering issue.

the fact that it doesn't occur with every game can make it hard to diagnose.

the first thing i would do is ensure that the Power Plan is running in High Performance mode.
sometimes power saving or balanced plans will disable certain devices to save power or just limit the power available to them.

but if this issue is only occurring with Steam based games then just move all of them to your internal drive and all others to the external.
it could have something to do with Steam's base being on the internal drive and it's overlay, etc having some issue communicating with data on the external drive.

a better solution to all of this may be to just install a much larger drive into the laptop and keep all games on an internal drive.
though if this laptop is still under warranty you should definitely check if this drive swap would void it.

 

[Deleted member 362816]

Make sure you are using the USB ports on the side with the audio jack as that laptop has different speed usb ports.