Internal/external drive speed questions

Question

Internal/external drive speed questions

Ok, so because of the Christmas Sale, I finally bought the Valve Complete Pack, but my internal HD doesn't have the place to store it all. I have an external 1 TB HDD, but I'm not sure if I should use it for gaming as I'm worried about performance issues.

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My HD info, from System Information:

Intel 6 Series Chipset:

Vendor: Intel

Product: 6 Series Chipset

Link Speed: 6 Gigabit

Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit

Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported

ST9320325ASG:

Capacity: 320.07 GB (3,20,07,29,33,376 bytes)

Model: ST9320325ASG

Revision: 0009APM1

Serial Number: 5VD6G14T

Native Command Queuing: Yes

Queue Depth: 32

Removable Media: No

Detachable Drive: No

BSD Name: disk0

Rotational Rate: 5400

Medium Type: Rotational

Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)

S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

Volumes:

disk0s1:

Capacity: 209.7 MB (20,97,15,200 bytes)

BSD Name: disk0s1

Content: EFI

Mac OSX:

Capacity: 249 GB (2,49,00,00,01,536 bytes)

Available: 44.2 GB (44,19,87,64,544 bytes)

Writable: Yes

File System: Journaled HFS+

BSD Name: disk0s2

Mount Point: /

Content: Apple_HFS

Recovery HD:

Capacity: 650 MB (65,00,06,528 bytes)

BSD Name: disk0s3

Content: Apple_Boot

BOOTCAMP?:

Capacity: 70.21 GB (70,21,26,48,960 bytes)

Available: 21.88 GB (21,87,83,86,688 bytes)

Writable: Yes

File System: UFSD_NTFS_COMPR

BSD Name: disk0s4

Mount Point: /Volumes/BOOTCAMP

Content: Microsoft Basic Data

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So:

a) If Firewire 800 faster than/slower than/as fast as my internal HDD?

b) Is Firewire 800 fast enough for me to store the games on the external HDD and play? -- (I can also buy a Thunderbolt cable, but it's really expensive)

c) If I store them on the HDD and use Symbolic Links for the SteamApps folder, will the transfer rate affect playing? (as opposed to installing Steam on the HDD and playing from it)

Thanks a lot in advance!

MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3), 2.3 GHz Core i5, 4 GB RAM

Posted on Dec 26, 2012 3:12 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

clintonfrombirmingham

Level 7

30,100 points

Dec 26, 2012 3:29 AM in response to skull_candy91

First off, I've no idea what the "Valve Complete Pack" is? But...

FireWire 800 is much slower than the speed of your internal drive... much slower. If these are Windows games, I'm not sure how you'd access them - from Boot Camp, probably. The fastest external drive you can get is a Thunderbolt 7200rpm drive - I've three of them and they're incredibly speedy.

I don't know a thing about Steam or Steam games - I'll let someone familiar with them answer your Steam questions...

Clinton

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Answer 2

Dec 26, 2012 3:33 AM in response to clintonfrombirmingham

It doesn't really matter, you answered the main question - Firewire 800 is slower than the internal drive. Is Thunderbolt as fast as the internal drive?

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Answer 3

Dec 26, 2012 3:45 AM in response to skull_candy91

Thunderbolt has a theoretical speed of 10 Gbps while your internal drive is likely 6Gbps, theoretically, but the limiting factor is the speed of the 7200 rpm drives - and you won't get 10Gbps out of spinning drives (or 6Gbps for that matter).

An SSD in your hard drive bay would give you the fastest performance possible (if you're willing to make that sort of investment). Second best would be an SSD in a Thunderbolt enclosure.

You may want to look into 'upgrading' your internal drive?

Clinton

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