TECH: Anyone running UO (2D) off an external HD?

[Seismic]

I'm needing to run UO off an external hard drive - 2D client only. Is this possible with good, playable PvM speed??

 

[Kurgan]

You can do it. Install the game onto the xternal drive. But you might run into issue's with the load balance..
Worth giving a try..

 

[Seismic]

You can do it. Install the game onto the xternal drive. But you might run into issue's with the load balance..
Worth giving a try..

I'd like to find out if anyone has done this first ....

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

Yes I have run UO and EQ both off an external USB 2.0 drive and it was faster than when it was installed ine the ... lets say C: driive.

USB 2.0 is going to give you a 400mpbs band width. For most physical drives this is going to be greater than the band width required to transfer data to/from the physical platter/disk and the on board controllers memory.

I eventually added a SATA 3.0 Drive on both computers and copied the uo directories (2d and kr) to them.

I would NOT suggest you do this on a USB 1.0 link by the eay ans that is only a 10mb connection.

 

[Blade_Thugluv]

i have a copy on my external i keep up to date for those days when i go to friends houses who only have WoW on their pcs or no games at all. No issues

~Blade

 

[Kratos Aurion]

You can run UO off an external hard drive but its one of those things thats really not advised UNLESS that drive is set to your primary hard drive or the following..

Things to consider:

Is the hard drive magnetic or solid state (usb mass storage device)?

If its magnetic, whats the disk RPM? the higher the rpm the faster its going to read data etc.

If its solid state, you shouldn't have too much to worry about since there is no latency of the read/write head running back and fourth etc. The only thing would be to consider if your running usb 2.0 and its likely you are.

I use to play UO off a 4G mass storage device just fine at school with slight lag effects due to the significant use of the T1 line.

 

[Vesta]

To set things straight. IDE is going to be faster than USB. Sata is faster than IDE

Carry on...

 

[Kith Kanan]

Get an external that can run Esata and ofc make sure ya MB supports it , and ya good to go

 

[Doomsday Dragon]

I probably would not put UO on an external drive unless it was sata but hey that is only my preference. I run a pair of 10k rpm sata drives in the machine though so the usb harddrive I have feels like it runs at snail speed.

But if you have a reason for it other people say it works so give it a shot.

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

...
I run a pair of 10k rpm sata drives...

The characteristics of the drive are the .... bottle neck.

I look at two aspects and am required to assume the 3rd as they are either no longer published ar more difficult to find than I care to expend the effort to find.

Rotational Delay - One of the most important aspects. This is generally looked at exclusivly as the rpms, but that can be a very big misleading thing to do without the details (were that pesky devil lives).

The amount of On board memory. The larger the better is my motto as at mechanical/physical world any drive the average person can buy simply can not transfer data to and from the platters / disks at a rate that is significant compared to the rate at which the on board controller can transfer data to / from its interface to the (assumed) cpu. Of course this to with out the details (were the pesky devil lives) can be very misleading as there are proofs that MS's caching and the on board memory can work at odds with each other and produce worse results than if one or the other were absent. Here too one needs to look at the details, when one does one sees the test being performed are not even remotely resembling what a typical home computer user would be doing.

The Third leg and the only one in my control, is the disk usage and the interface connection. If one were to buy a 7200rpm, 8mb 80gb Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate hard drive (should be able to be bought for under $60US) and put it in a good USB2.0 / Firewire / ESATA drive case and connect that with the appropriate cable AND dedicate that connection to that drive (ESATA does this as it is a point to point communication protocol) then in my opinion and experience one is going to have a superior transfer rate when compared to ... lets say the C: drive that is a ... lets say Free for all Head Movement AND data transfer environment.

 

[Seismic]

i have a copy on my external i keep up to date for those days when i go to friends houses who only have WoW on their pcs or no games at all. No issues

~Blade

Ok, this is definetly what I'm looking to do. How'd you do this when the game installs registry keys to the local (C:\) hard drive??

I take it they aren't necessary then if you used the ext drive on another comp WITHOUT a UO install already on it??