The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Sucess with external hard drive gaming

    Discussion in 'eMachines' started by hamlineman, Jun 12, 2004.

  1. hamlineman

    hamlineman Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    2
    Messages:
    10
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I have been using my m6805 quite a bit since purchasing it a couple weeks ago. Instead of buying an internal hard drive to replace the 4200 rpm that came with the machine, I bought a 7200 rpm external drive and connected via USB.

    I have been playing lots of Serious Sam 2, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Condition Zero on it and it has worked flawlessly. Anyone else been gaming with externals?
     
    hamlineman, Jun 12, 2004
    #1
  2. Animasaki

    Animasaki Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    34
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    That's good news, I am intending to do the same. I just bought my 6805 (awesome machine), and I'm looking at a Western Digital 120GB USB2 drive from NewEgg.com. I'm pretty satasfied with the 4200RPM drive, but it's nice to know that I can't go wrong with putting programs on the external.

    [​IMG]
    eMachines 6805, and enjoying it thoroughly! :D
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 6, 2015
    Animasaki, Jun 12, 2004
    #2
  3. orion7144

    orion7144 Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    5
    Messages:
    164
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I would buy a standalone drive and an enclosure seperatly. Cost is a little cheaper and you will be able to upgrade the drive later. Another thing that I do is use the enclosure as a "Ghost" drive to back up all of my PC's so I can just put my backup drive in the enclosure when need be.

    I see that the USB drive you mention is $150 from Newegg. If you buy a bare drive from there it is $83.50 for the same drive and add a good USB 2.0/Firewire enclosure for $40 and you are all set. You could even get the 160 or 200gig drive and still be about the same money.
     
    orion7144, Jun 13, 2004
    #3
  4. Animasaki

    Animasaki Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    34
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    That's a great idea! I had completely forgotten about seperate enclosures. I just put together a numpad (gotta have it for Final Fantasy XI!), 80GB Western Digital 7200RPM 8MB cache drive, and USB2 aluminum enclosure for $137 with shipping. Good deal, that.

    [​IMG]
    eMachines 6805, and enjoying it thoroughly! :D
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 6, 2015
    Animasaki, Jun 13, 2004
    #4
  5. chrisc615

    chrisc615 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    So what would be better for game load times? An external 7200rpm or a 7k60. I only game at my desk so portability is no big deal.
     
    chrisc615, Jun 14, 2004
    #5
  6. Venombite

    Venombite Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    126
    Messages:
    3,532
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    Usually the local HDD gives the best load times. The USB drives, even though they may have a faster RPM rate, still has to transfer data through the USB port, etc.. before execution. Not only will a replacement to you primary HDD to a 7200rpm HDD increase performance for games, it'll increase overall load times for anything you do on the system.

    -Vb-
     
    Venombite, Jun 14, 2004
    #6