SSD for External Drive?

Eric Sauco · Feb 2, 2015

256GB would give him room for 4 games. He'll be switching a lot. I think he just wants his most active games on his SSD and the rest on HD. Its how PC builds are doing now to get the best of both worlds. 256G SSD card cost around $110. Heh go for it if you
want, the constant switching games throughout your life would be annoying unless you plan to play certain games forever.

CodeMaster19934 · Feb 7, 2015

this is starting to sound like a pc gaming thread.

NonSportsGirl · Feb 7, 2015

That's a fair point CodeMaster but PC gamers have been using SSDs for quite a while now, so they are a pretty good pool of experience to pull from.

I am primarily a PC gamer and I still am not sold on the benefit of SSDs. Is a performance benefit there? Yes of course it is. Is that worth the extra money over a traditional hard drive or even a SSHD? No, to me it isn't.

To me if your system is in need of the benefits of SSDs, then it's time you got a new system.

Lhomas Tint · Jul 24, 2015

since the internal 500gb ssd was already full i decided to go for a SSD. for games with long loading times like GTA the speed bump is impressive!

[table][tr][td]Title[/td][td]Loading HDD*[/td][td]Loading SSD*[/td][td]Speed Gain[/td][/tr][tr][td]Halo Masterchief Collection[/td][td]22,13[/td][td]15,91[/td][td]39,09%[/td][/tr][tr][td]Geometry Wars Evolved[/td][td]15,31[/td][td]12,11[/td][td]26,42%[/td][/tr][tr][td]Call of Duty Advanced Warefare[/td][td]28,3[/td][td]9,74[/td][td]190,55%[/td][/tr][tr][td]Fifa 2015[/td][td]15,23[/td][td]12,94[/td][td]17,70%[/td][/tr][tr][td]GTA V Single Player[/td][td]158,11[/td][td]57,84[/td][td]173,36%[/td][/tr][/table]

bimek · Aug 12, 2015

I am using a 500GB SSD with an external USB 3.0 case and would buy it again.

The performance increase is very noticable and for games like Forza unvaluable.

Leaving games with no loading time on the internal drive and moving games with many loading times to SSD is the key !

MarkMoore793 · Oct 31, 2018

You will pretty much get the 2 "opinion camps" on this one, those that want the speed and those that want the space.

Me, I am in the "space" camp - The current "sweet point" for HDD at cost per GB is the 4TB ones. I have one with a decent spin speed and cache, all my games are on there and loading times are noticeable better than the internal. I have a very large number
of games installed to support the wants of my extended family as well as myself and still my storage is only 26%. So that's my preference. But Don't disagree that others, who are sole players of their machine and want speed over all else and are happy to
move games around as required and possibly have to increase their space again sooner rather than later, will be happy with SSD

Obsessive Power

because of their higher prices I would only be able to afford a small (256GB) SSD drive

Hi

Don't be fooled into buying an external SSD, most are far too expensive for what they are. I'm not saying not to buy an SSD though.

The cheapest option is to make your own. All you need is a standard 2.5" SSD and an external USB 3.0 drive enclosure. SSD's on their own work out a lot cheaper and a Drive enclosure costs only $10. External SSD use the same tech, just in a glued together
case.

It's not complicated either. Putting an SSD hard drive in an enclosure is as easy as changing batteries in a TV remote.

My external SSD is a 2.5" Corsair MX500 SSD drive.

ETP2

Thanks. It appears the SSD external drive number 2 was the issue. Maybe!

That narrows it down to 3 issues.

Bad USB SSD Docking cable

Bad SSD

XBOX S does not play well with 2 external SSD drives

Sometimes when a drive starts to fail it will do strange things .

last one that failed had a bad cable as well as a bad drive. Difficult to troubleshoot eh.

Obsessive Power

Just like to add, unless your external drive is an SSD, don't bother. This game NEEDS an SSD, it will be unplayable on a mechanical hard drive.

NaZoooom

There is an improvement when using SSD drives especially in games where the load times are already long (GTA5, The Witcher 3 etc). If I were buying an external drive, I would go SSD over a normal external hard drive not just for this generation but to ensure
it lasts well into the next gen. There are loads of tests carried out by external organisations like Digital Foundry that show benefits of SSD drives.

With installed games, you would still need the disc if it was a physical purchase or the account you used to purchase the game to play whatever was on the SSD.

US Revenge

SSD will probably be too expensive. chances are there will be an internal SSD though. with external hard drives for data and such like for 360.

SSD for External Drive?