Can i play my games from external HDD?

[Leicht]

I just realise that 100GB is not that enough for downloading and installing games on my bootcamp partition. I sort of google this question and what I notice is that the pattern of "bottleneck" answers due to the USB unable to transfer data from HDD as fast as an internal HDD, which can cause lag during gameplay.

I'm just wondering, is it more faster if I just use Thunderbolt cable or a 3.0 USB?

Thank you.

 

[TB]

I'm just wondering, is it more faster if I just use Thunderbolt cable or a 3.0 USB?

Assuming you have a 3.0 header on your motherboard, you are using a 3.0 cable and a 3.0 drive, it will transfer faster, yes.

If any if those are 2.0, the entire thing will run at 2.0 speeds.

 

[Grayfox]

If the transfer speeds are good enough it should be fine, but it wont be fast as internal SATA speeds.

 

[Leicht]

Assuming you have a 3.0 header on your motherboard, you are using a 3.0 cable and a 3.0 drive, it will transfer faster, yes.

If any if those are 2.0, the entire thing will run at 2.0 speeds.

"Two USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps)". Is that what you mean by "3.0 Header"?

So the external HDD must have a 3.0 USB and a 3.0 cable to connect to my laptop?

Does it make any difference if I use external SSD instead of HDD, in terms of data transfer rate?

If the transfer speeds are good enough it should be fine, but it wont be fast as internal SATA speeds.

"Two Thunderbolt ports (up to 10 Gbps)". Is that fast?

This is my laptop spec

 

[sesselpupser]

Does it make any difference if I use external SSD instead of HDD, in terms of data transfer rate?

It might. If the HDD is maxing out the bandwidth then you won't see any difference, but there will be a reduction in seek time (a hard drive has to spin the platter to a specific point to read the data, SSDs have everything accessible at the same speed). I would have thought a Thunderbolt SSD drive would be your best bet, but it's still far from ideal.