Performance with External Drives?

[Twist86]

I am thinking of putting all my emulators/roms on a 1TB pocket drive and I am curious would PCSX2 have any playback issues with a USB 2.0 connection? You're looking at 8mb transfer speeds normally on USB 2.0 standards. I haven't bought anything yet but I just want to make sure.

Thank you.

[Livy]

I sometimes play game via my 8GB flash drive and don't notice any performance difference. The USB 2.0 speed is as fast as the PS2 disc reading speed in my opinion.

The place where you store the game only affects loading speed, not framerate.

[Ge-Force]

I think PCSX2 needs about 5-6MB/s to run smoothly.

I have run PCSX2 from a memory stick without trouble, although that stick can transfer large files at 20+MB/s (USB 2.0).

[abdo123]

yeah tested my friend EHDD ( he got a nice ISO collection of his own )

when he come to my house we play some of his ISO and mine

the performance is the same

[Twist86]

I see, thank you all for the feedback. My collection isn't too big but uncompressed I sit around 350GB or so in ISO's, compressed its about 150GB but the rest of my consoles fill up the last 150GB of space

I use to have WALLS of games in my room, now all my games fit on one drive...its amusing

[Ambient_Malice]

The main issue is the CPU overhead of USB file transfer. Games which stream constantly, such as Grand Theft Auto, may run worse from a USB drive.

[Twist86]

Any particular GTA title does this more than another? I have a flash stick I can test and I have all the GTA titles.

[Ambient_Malice]

All of them. San Andreas moreso. GTA constantly streams data from the DVD.

[abdo123]

the USB2 isn't slower than the DVD AFAIK the PS2 DVD rarely runs @ X16 you know

[soratidus999]

actually just had a brainwave

there are some of those external drives (more specifically the 3.5" ones) that like to go into a power saving mode

so if a game decides to seek after not reading the disk for 5 mins it might skip, this will never happen though