Is it ok to put FS9 on external harddrive?

[coolpick]

Hello, I have a laptop that is pretty good (for me)(1.66GHz duo core 2, 1GB DDR2 ram, X1400 256MB video card) anyway the HD I have is only 100GB I was thinking about buying one of those cheap external harddrives from like walmart, the 60GB. I was wondering if it would work if I loaded FS9 on the external with a couple of add-ons(like 5 planes), I also have company of heroes, BF2, BF2142. Or should I not bother, becuase I really dont save much on it, couple papers, couple of Catia CAD drawings and no music on iTunes.

If you understand my ramble there, is it worth the 80 bucks to get the harddrive to save some space on my harddrive, and will having the program running off the external slow anything down? If I remember right the transfer speed was like 480mbps with a 2MB?(GB?) buffer? My laptop harddrive runs at 5400rpm if that matters.

Thanks alot even reading this, its been a long day for me.

[Hai Perso Coyone?]

It's perfectly normal...That's what I did...Installed FS9 on my external drive and flew about...Apart from the drive itself screwing about, nothing else ever went wrong...Make sure you format the External drive to NTFS first...My stupid drive came in as FAT32 and after a put 100GB of data on it did I realise my mistake...Now I am wondering whether or not to format...Stupid thing

As far as space is concerned...I filled up my FS9 folder to 40GB and nothing went wrong

[coolpick]

Thanks! Now for another question I already have a couple of games already installed on my regular HD can I transfer those over to the external without lossing anything? or will I have to uninstall and reinstall on the external, becuase I dont want to lose a bunch of stuff I have unlocked.

[Hai Perso Coyone?]

Thanks! Now for another question I already have a couple of games already installed on my regular HD can I transfer those over to the external without lossing anything? or will I have to uninstall and reinstall on the external, becuase I dont want to lose a bunch of stuff I have unlocked.

Well, for best results, I'd first un-install the games and then re-install them over to the other drive...In case of the files you don't want to lose, just copy/paste them into a temporary folder...Then just copy them back once you install...

[Apex]

My experience with FS9 on main HD and external drive simultaneously (I was in process of moving certain programs to external to save space on main HD):  FS9 performed noticeably better on the main HD, same settings, better frame rates.  It is possible that the speed of the external drive had something to do with this, I'm just guessing, I don't know too much about hardware.  But you've got 100Gigs on your main, I've only got 40Gigs main, so didn't have much choice.  You might want to do a comparison and then make a decision.  I've only got 40Gigs main.  

Follow the other advise here re: uninstall/reinstall & also Ashar said to re-format an external to NTFS, I did that, it only took a few minutes.

External drives are really good for backup also, pictures, Excel/Word files, whatever.  

[coolpick]

I think that I am going to go ahead and buy an external HD but I am still going to keep the games on the regular HD, and just put my Catia files on the external.

[Conan Edogawa]

I got my FS9 on an extra part on my HDD.


...and it does work.

[born_2_fly]

It will work, but you may experience some lagging. I'm not saying that all computers will, but some may if they have USB 1.1's rather than 2.0's as the data takes longer to transfere.

Not saying as a definate, but there is a distinct possibility that it may cause lag.

Alex

[Kaworu]

Just about all computers made after 2003 have usb 2.0 ports. I'm pretty sure...if you can, it may help to replace the cable the external hard drive came with with another one with a faster data transfer speed. I ve got my cable for everything at somewhere close to 500mbps.

[Hai Perso Coyone?]

Well, I didn't experience any lag on mine...The same FPS in the same areas... :-?

[coolpick]

Well, I'm going to go ahead and buy one, and I guess I just try it out both ways, I just have a bunch of time on my hands anyway right at the moment.

[Bad2bone]

I have run FS9 off an external HD for a long time and never had any problems.

You can reformat the computer with no effect on the flightsim.