Need more space with bootcamp!

[TheIrwinner]

I have a new late 2012 27" iMac 3.2/680mx/Fusion. Absolutely the best mac I've ever owned or used(6 since 1995). One reason I bought the iMac was for convenient & fast PC gaming(the 680mx has easily taken everything I've thrown at it), and using Win8 and a 100GB partition, I've run out of room on the bootcamp partition. Without wanting to reconfigure Bootcamp setup and reinstall Win8 and all games etc., is it possible to just get a USB drive and install additional games on a PC formatted thumb drive(or external hdd) for access while running Win8? Will Windows allow me to install games on a partition different from the system disk?

Or is this a question for forums.pcrumors.com ?

[RedCroissant]

Originally Posted by TheIrwinner

I have a new late 2012 27" iMac 3.2/680mx/Fusion. Absolutely the best mac I've ever owned or used(6 since 1995). One reason I bought the iMac was for convenient & fast PC gaming(the 680mx has easily taken everything I've thrown at it), and using Win8 and a 100GB partition, I've run out of room on the bootcamp partition. Without wanting to reconfigure Bootcamp setup and reinstall Win8 and all games etc., is it possible to just get a USB drive and install additional games on a PC formatted thumb drive(or external hdd) for access while running Win8? Will Windows allow me to install games on a partition different from the system disk?

Or is this a question for forums.pcrumors.com ?

I don't see why you couldn't make an executable .iso file copied from the game and just run it through the usb port. Seems like that would be pretty straightforward.

[TheIrwinner]

Originally Posted by RedCroissant

I don't see why you couldn't make an executable .iso file copied from the game and just run it through the usb port. Seems like that would be pretty straightforward.

I'll give it a shot. Mainly using Steam to download games, so I will have to designate an alternate installation disk...I will download a demo and post my results...

[Quad5Ny]

Using a external drive will work fine, just make sure its USB 3 or ThunderBolt. Steam even has a option for this; Settings > Downloads+Cloud > Steam Library Folders > Add Library Folder.

If you can find a ThunderBolt drive for a decent price, I would go with that because it has less CPU overhead (i.e. none). By overhead I mean it uses a percentage of your processer while transferring files. That's important when you already have a game that's using 100% of your CPU.