We all know that TSW & DLCs are quite memory heavy - & I get why. But not all PCs or laptops have the storage required, especially if they're multi use or shared. Would anyone have any recommendations for an external SDD harddrive which is between 500GB & 1TB? Preferably budget friendly? Feel free to share your tips, tricks & recommendations below!
Advice from Steam Support: "External hard drives are not recommended for use with Steam or Steam's games. Aside from many potential performance issues, external hard drives may connect or disconnect from the computer at inopportune times as part of their normal operations. If you encounter this issue with an external drive, install Steam and your games to an internal drive instead."
Depends on the laptop. Most models can be upgraded or even have a spare slot for a second drive. However, it can be difficult to get into some laptops as they are not designed with easy access in mind.
Not to be rude, but playing TSW on a laptop is basically asking for issues. TSW has such a huge amount of DLCs and most laptops simply don’t have the capacity for that, and they’re generally too weak to run the game at a reasonable quality. Even if they claim it has an RTX 4080, it’s never the same as a desktop GPU because that simply doesn’t fit. The best advice I can give you not really a solution, I know, considering the high prices is to buy a Desktop PC. Connecting an external hard drive won’t fix the problem; it will only create more issues. Annoying, but that’s just how it is.
I get what you mean. But I'm working with what I've got & on a budget. I do have a PC, but ironically it's a lower spec than the laptop! Although it ran TSW5 okay on low settings. I was mostly looking for a drive of some sort just to store the DLCs on as not to take up the entirety of the built in memory. TSW & WOS seem to run fine on the laptop at medium settings, although that's probably down to only have three routes on TSW installed & WOS not being that heavy. (Medium quality, upscalling, DLSS, balanced, enhanced lighting off, capped at 30FPS - Looked decent, only stuttered a few times in route, but probably loading in a tile or because i was in Suburban London) I was mostly going to use TSW on the laptop for livery designer, as that's what I enjoy most - whilst keeping game play to the PC during off time. Which probably would be of a routine of install, uninstall DLCs pending on which I'm working with (nervous emjio) But appreciate the help. I do like Matts idea of a steamdeck with a 1TB micro SD card!
While they don't recommend playing from an external drive, Steam does make backing up to an external drive very easy. Do you have enough games on your main drive that moving some externally would solve the problem?
My laptop runs a pair of 8TB WD Black SN850X drives. Purchased them relatively cheap when solid state memory was overproduced due to all the fab capacity brought online due to the pandemic saturating the market. Good luck upgrading any storage right now though. those drives are currently selling for three times what I paid, and even HDDs have seen a knockon effect as businesses in desperate need of storage without going bankrupt have turned to them.
Whilst I've not installed all the DLCs onto the laptop, I certainly have enough that would help! I think i have around 140 - 150GB of DLC As for the games installed on my laptop, I don't have much, but enough that moving them to another drive would help. • Untitled Goose [HONK] • Wonders of Sodor [w/james] • Tiny Glade • Trains & Islands • TSW7 - ECML Peterborough - Fife Circle - LO 710 & route - Class 66 - Training Centre [All TSW includes custom liveries from LD of which there are around 35 - 40] As it stands, the laptop has 90GB free out of 500GB To be fair, the laptop gets used alot for small & large design projects in Affinity & Studio too!
