Questions regarding an external hard drive

Hello All,

I wonder if you can help me please.

I have recently purchased a laptop which I am very happy with. It is by no means top of the range, but it does play the latest games with little problem. I am at present getting back into pc gaming in a big way, and have recently purchased World in conflict, Red Alert 3, Company of Heroes, Age of Empires 3, Civilisation Complete, and Football Manager 2009! (i know that is alot of games, and I do feel a tad greedy!!) :)

I have loaded two of the aforementioned games onto my hard drive, and they run perfectly, without any cause for concern. I am worried though that if I continue to load the other games onto my computer they may bring it to a stand still. My computer has 140GB of memory on the hard drive and I still have 90 GB to play with. :)

So I am considering buying an external hard drive, but I don't mind admitting I am not very technically minded. Please excuse my ignorance on this matter, but I have a few questions to those more experienced members out there:

If I buy an external hard drive, will this make my computer run faster?

Will I be able to load the games directly onto the hard drive, and run them with a minimum of fuss?

Or am I approaching this matter in completely the wrong way, and is there a better solution for this? (other than buying another computer)?

I would really appreciate any guidance anyone would be willing to provide, :)

Many Thanks for taking the time to read this,

Kind Regards,

Pete

Installing onto your internal drive won't hurt or slow you down. The only thing you really need to worry about is keeping a minimum of HD space free, around 10% is usually fine... At the rate your going maybe that will be a problem. :) An external drive will work, but being a laptop you probably only have USB which will be much slower than an sata/esata drive. It will work, but load times will be much higher. (depending on game... ) Captain__Tripps

Hello Captain_Tripps, thank you for the speedy reply!

I have a few other questions if you have the time (and inclination! he he :) )

Considering I have 90GB of Hard Drive available, how many more games from that list above do you think it would be safe to install? If I run games from an external hard drive, will it cause a "lagging" effect when I play gamse online. The main reason I bought the majority of the games was to play them online you see! :)

I am not so concerned if it takes me an extra 30 seconds to load the game up, but wouldn't want it to impede upon the online playability of my games :)

Thanks again for taking the time to help me.

Kind Regards,

Pete

Thanks Ravirr,

Excellent help, and quick too. :)

Baring that in mind I'll load another couple of games on and double check my memory afterwards, then reconsider if I need an external hard drive after all.

I can be a worry wort at times!

Thanks again both, :)

Kind Regards,

Pete

Hey there Mate....

I can answer your questions about the external hard drive you may be purchasing in the near future... I am kinda a computer nerd on both mac and pc... lol See here I told you we could help eachother out in some way or another... I am going to answer your questions in number....

1: no your computer will not run any faster if you get an external hard drive... however if you move all your items to the external drive like photos and music and save them all on there ( it may take longer to download on to your mp3 player) and remove them from the computer harddrive then you'll have more room for your games and the computer may run a little faster...

2:now this question I am not 10 percent sure about... I know my mom bought a huge external drive and ran most of her programs off of it but I think it all depends on the kind of external drive you buy.... I will ask her an replay with the answer later...

3: I think you are going the right way by purchasing an external drive... the other thing besides buying a new computer ( depending on your computer) you can buy more RAM.... the more the better and it depends on your computer and the space you have inside the terminal to put it... If you do that it isn't very hard to make the computer faster and then you can put all your games on the computer and they will be able to run like a charm... you have to remember the problem with vista is that it usually needs a minimum of 2g RAM momory or maybe even 3g but for Vista alone to run optimally is to have more then you will never have trouble running anything with vista so that might be your first buy and then go for the hard drive....

Hope that helped you....:D

hey pete ,

its right that SATA/PATA HDs are way faster than USB ports but if u get your RAM upgraded it may compensate for the slow loading USBs get ur RAM upgraded to about 4 GB .Then again you can always uninstall the games you are not playing or you have completed (keep the saved game file saved separately they arent larger than about 200 kbs)and install newer ones in their place