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Running a game off an external HD using a MBP

marclapierre13

marclapierre13

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 7, 2005
869
0
On my MBP, I have partitioned my HD, so that windows has 26 gb (20gb left after installing OS XP)

I think it would fill up quite fast, so Im wondering if there is a way I can intall a game onto the hard drive, and then play it off of that. I would have the original disk and everything of course.
 
The vast majority of Mac OS X games are completely contained within their specific folders.

You should be able to select your external drive during installation. If not, moving the folder over shouldn't cause any problems.

In conclusion: yes, this will work fine.
 
cmon guys. I cant believe a thread asking about how to clean the keyboard keys got more replies than this thread.
 
i asked the same question in a previous thread, the answer was that it depends on the speed of the drive as well as the connection type...i know esata would do wonders for external gaming...but no one could ever tell me if firewire 800 would do just as good..hows that for an answer? lol
 
byttle said:
i asked the same question in a previous thread, the answer was that it depends on the speed of the drive as well as the connection type...i know esata would do wonders for external gaming...but no one could ever tell me if firewire 800 would do just as good..hows that for an answer? lol
Click to expand...

Interesting. Well the HD that im thinking about getting is one of the WD Passport hard drives. So I hope it works. I guess the only way is to try it. Ill throw a crappy game on, and try to install it there.
 
If you have a decent external hard drive, it shouldn't be a problem. My cousin used to do it off a cheap slow one and it worked fine. You may drop a couple of FPS and loading time may increase but it is nothing that will ruin the game for you.
 
Update: I just installed Hitman BM on my partition, and it said the same thng HDV125 or something, component not found. so i dunno wtf.
 
slowpoke said:
I run Oblivion off a WD Passport and it gives me a pretty solid 40-50fps.
Click to expand...

Framerate and drive speed have absolutely no correlation.

You certainly do not need FireWire 800 or a blazingly fast drive in order to play games -- the only difference drive speed makes is with loading, not with gameplay.
 
I run all my Windows games over an external USB disk and it makes no difference whatsoever. Have you ever played a game that needed disk access? Answer is if you have, you need more RAM.

Games tend to take a longer time 'loading' into areas and starting new games because they load information into memory :)
 
I'd use firewire over USB. I run it off a no-name "metal gear box" external i bought for this old 120 i had lying around. Runs fine in windows, I run TF2, Bioshock, C&C, CoH, and many others without issues.

you're just bottlenecking data performance with USB. FW800 is ridiculously fast.
 
I want to get a WD passport, for portability. But how come my Hitman Blood money game wont work??
Other games will work right?

PS:I think Starcraft is the only game I can think of that reads some data off of the disc.
 
I know people who used to run games off their ipod(at least I think it was an ipod, not sure if they have space you can dedicate to storage as i've never had one). It wasn't great but it worked.
 
...

I installed san andreas on my iPod(using it as a file holder or storage device) instead of the program files, and i installed a no-cd crack and i play san andreas off my iPod on my MacBook, i tried it on my friends pc and laptop and it worked on those too.:):apple: 
 
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