Question SATA 3 HDD Speed vs USB 3.0 External Drive Speed

[richk1853]

Hi everyone, I have a Dell gaming laptop that has a 128gb m.2 boot drive and a 1 tb 5400 rpm HDD. I have a 512gb Samsung EVO 840 lying around and I wanna install it in place of the 1 tb 5400 rpm drive, but with some games taking over 125gb+ that 512gb isn't going to last very long (the 1tb won't last long either but still twice as much storage). I have a 3tb Western Digital Passport with USB 3.0 connection and a standard 5400rpm laptop drive inside that enclosure and I was wondering if running games of that external drive will be significantly slower than that SATA 3 1tb 5400rpm HDD already in the laptop? Yes my laptop has USB 3.0 ports.

 

[Zizo007]

Its the same speed but Steam doesn't like games on external hard drives as games might crash or steam might give errors. I would keep the 1Tb in the laptop. Why not just install the games you play the most on the 500Gb SSD?

 

[richk1853]

Its the same speed but Steam doesn't like games on external hard drives as games might crash or steam might give errors. I would keep the 1Tb in the laptop. Why not just install the games you play the most on the 500Gb SSD?

Battlefield V and Modern Warfare alone are 230gb together, add two more newer Triple A games plus you need to reserve some space for patches or Steam/Blizzard/Origin/UPlay won't let you update the game. 4 games is kind of a pitiful amount taking all the space of my main storage drive. Plus it's only a 1050ti i5 8300h laptop I will use only occasionally (not meant to replace my gaming desktop) and will have to play all my newer games at low settings anyway so not sure that 5400rpm slower drive is that big of a deal. Probably a better idea to stick that Samsung 840 EVO in my main desktop so I can enjoy it more.