Storing Train Sim Files On External Harddrive.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by UP13, Jan 11, 2021.

  1. UP13

    UP13 Well-Known Member

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    Apologies if answer is obvious or posted in the wrong place.

    I don't have much memory space left on my PC (fine for now but if I buy more DLC I'll be in hot water). Now I have 3tb external hard drive, where I keep all the family photos and videos, which is permanently plugged into my PC.

    Can I have all my train sim files on this harddrive and still run train sim or does the game only work if they are in the default file locations?
     
  2. aidanhughes1

    aidanhughes1 New Member

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    If you setup steam to install games to that folder, it should work like any other storage device. you'd need to move the whole game onto that drive though, and route loading will be a lot slower, but it should work.
     
  3. UP13

    UP13 Well-Known Member

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    How much slower is slower?
     
  4. inversnecky

    inversnecky Well-Known Member

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    I’m with you on the dwindling storage front!

    Not sure if you’ve ever suffered a hard drive failure, but please ensure your drive has a back up if it has all your family photos!

    Remember one of the specifications of hard drives is ‘MTF’ - ‘Mean Time until Failure’.
     
  5. aidanhughes1

    aidanhughes1 New Member

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    Depend's on what speed the USB connector is. If it's USB 3.0 it'll only be a little slower (SATA is usually 6Gb/s, USB 3.0 is 5Gb/s) but if it's USB 2.0 then it'll be a lot slower (0.48Gb/s)
     
  6. Tomas9970

    Tomas9970 Well-Known Member

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    USB 3.0 hard drive should be fine for running games from. I mean the speeds should be comparable to an internal one.
     
  7. UP13

    UP13 Well-Known Member

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    My pc is from last summer and just discovered that it is an unused 1tb harddrive and the solid drive state is the one nearly full. I was wondering how I was running out of space so quickly.

    I'm assuming internally won't make too much difference?

    Thanks to all those who have offered support.
     
  8. BigMountain555

    BigMountain555 Well-Known Member

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    I installed TSW2 on my new external drive for the same reason and I have not noticed any difference in my case. TS and TSW are still on the main drive. I plan to move TS to save some space since that install contains a large amount of DLC. But the other poster is correct, USB 3 transfer is much faster than USB 2.
     
  9. majorminor

    majorminor Member

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    Why are we talking external drives, here?
    Unless we are running from a laptop, then almost any PC will have spare unused connectors inside that will allow you to fit extra INTERNAL drives, that will suffer NO performance hit....
    Just saying...:):cool:
     
  10. Aryffordd

    Aryffordd Guest

    Just incase there are people coming to this forum for help about external drives in the future...

    Whether a drive is internal or external *usually* makes a big difference, but it really depends on the controllers, the external interface used and the drives themselves. Things are never so simple. Also, some people may not feel comfortable opening up their PC and trying to install a drive, no matter how easy some may find it, while some people don't have the option at all if they're using an all-in-one or mini PC.

    Just to demonstrate the different speeds, here's the results from a quick test I did today. My internal drive is an NVMe SSD (bottom image), my external SSD is a SATA 6 drive working over USB 3 (the 5gbs variety, middle image), and the physical hard disk is running over a USB 2 connection (top image). Pretty amazing the differences it all makes.

    For any one considering an external SSD, USB 3 is a minimum. If your computer has a USB-C 3.2 connection running at 10gbs, it should in the real world easily get double the speed of my external drive, and if you have a USB4 or Thunderbolt 3 external NVMe SSD, you can approach very close to the internal NVMe speeds.


    Speed - Physical HD usb 2.png Speed - SSD usb 3.1.png Speed - SSD - NVMe .png
     
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  11. inversnecky

    inversnecky Well-Known Member

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    That’s interesting, thanks for posting. I’m amazed also at the speed difference between copying files between my two internal SSDs, and any external SSD etc. A GB seems to get copied in about a second.
     
  12. Peter Hayes

    Peter Hayes Well-Known Member

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    AYFF
    Good points - Thunderbolt 3 (external) with the correct cable has a maximum bandwidth of 40 gps - I have run TS on a firecuda gaming dock for about a year now and do not notice the difference between an internal NVMe drive wrt loading and tile boundary stutters.
     
  13. UP13

    UP13 Well-Known Member

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    Very quickly. If I copy and paste all my railworks folders over to my other internal drive (with far more space) will it still work or is there other stuff I need to do?

    At the risk of sounding like an idiot, will I still need to copy over 'program files 86' folders etc so it has exactly the same directory path or do I not need to?

    If somebody can explain in a really clear and concise manner that would be appreciated. Also don't worry about sounding patronising, I just want to know how to do it.
     
  14. inversnecky

    inversnecky Well-Known Member

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    I presume there will be registry keys pointing to the current program location though - likely you'd need to uninstall and reinstall, as editing the registry can be a killer if you don't know what you're doing.
     
  15. 749006

    749006 Well-Known Member

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    You can have your Steam folder on any drive you want and you just tell it thru the Steam Client
    I have TS2021 on my G:\ Drive and since I got it in the sale my TSW2 on my M:\ drive - both of which are internal.

    A problem could occur if Steam in on an External drive and the Steam Client was started before the drive was plugged in.
     
  16. Peter Hayes

    Peter Hayes Well-Known Member

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  17. UP13

    UP13 Well-Known Member

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    Thanks guys. I'm following the steam advice and currently doing a backup onto my external before transferring to my other internal.
     

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