Running low on space? It happens a lot, especially among gamers who play a lot of triple-A games. You could delete some stuff to free it up… or upgrade your PC storage… but the problem is, what if your laptop or desktop doesn’t really allow for it? Or make it easy? What if you don’t want to risk voiding your warranty to add a bigger drive?
That’s where external storage really makes a difference. It’s quick, easy to install, upgradeable in the future, and—at least compared to pre-built laptop storage—often more affordable, too.
The modern game size problem
Alongside ray tracing and upscaling techniques, one of the most consistent trends in PC gaming has been the ever-increasing size of games. Whereas it was once rare for games to edge close to 100 GB, now it’s a surprise when new triple-A games are less than 150 GB. Some games are even blowing through 200 GB with DLCs and updates!
Enormous games can make storage decidedly difficult, especially when new laptops and desktops ship with a mere 512GB SSD as their entire storage capacity. (It’s time to make 1TB the default!) And it’s not like you can always install a new SSD, what with inaccessible designs and scary warranty-voiding stickers and pre-builts with bespoke layouts.
So, what’s the solution?
External storage! If you can’t increase it inside, then go outside.
Thanks to the growth of USB4 and Thunderbolt technologies, external storage has caught up to what’s possible with internal SSDs. If you just need a quick boost in storage capacity, plug an SSD into a USB port and get all the performance you need to run games directly.
You don’t even need to pay the slightly-over-odds pricing for typical external storage drives. Just grab an external enclosure and plug in a typical internal drive and you’re ready to go.
What I’m saying is: your next storage upgrade should be an external SSD, and you should start putting your games on it.
Avoiding the voiding
One of the greatest strengths of external storage is that there’s no risk. You get the drive, you plug it in (like you would a standard USB flash drive or gaming mouse), and you get all that added storage space with zero danger of voiding warranties or breaking hardware.
Even if upgrading your PC or laptop won’t invalidate your warranty or weaken your consumer protections, there’s always some risk when modifying your device. Experienced DIY PC builders can occasionally damage a component when installing it, and even something as small as dropping a screw behind the motherboard can be a monumental pain when all you wanted was extra storage to install a game.
External storage just makes the whole process easier. You buy the drive, you plug it in, and you install games on it. You don’t even need to turn your laptop or desktop off to do it!
External SSD performance is plenty
The reason why external storage has only become a viable option for direct gaming in recent years is because performance has only just caught up. Older drives weren’t fast enough, nor were the hardware interfaces. But with USB4 and Thunderbolt 4/5 now increasingly common on laptops and desktops, we now have real options for external SSDs that have the potential to play games directly.
Today, mainstream external SSDs can support data transfer rates up to 20 Gbps, with some even capable of up to 40 Gbps. With these SSDs built using PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 technology, we can now get upwards of 4,000 MB/s speeds, which is plenty for loading the latest triple-A games almost as quickly as top desktop drives can. (For options, check out our picks for the best external SSDs for gaming!)
By raw numbers, these kinds of drives are well behind the 64 Gbps theoretical max of PCIe 4.0 internal SSDs, and even more so behind the top PCIe 5.0 SSDs that theoretically cap out at 112 Gbps. But when it comes to gaming, you won’t find much practical benefit with those faster drives. When loading apps or game files, you just don’t move enough data to fully take advantage of that greater performance.
The only downside to using an external SSD for gaming is the availability of the fastest ports. Although USB-C ports are everywhere now, not all USB-C ports are the same. Some are based on older USB standards like USB 3.2 2×2, particularly in older and budget-focused laptops. That’s plenty fast, but not quite as fast as USB4 or Thunderbolt 5. Is it the end of the world? No. You can absolutely play games from an external SSD at these slower speeds, but your game load times will be slower for it (enough to be noticeable, even if it isn’t entirely unplayable).
In my book, the benefits of an external SSD for gaming outweigh the potential drawbacks. It’s worth having the extra space, and the convenience factor makes up for it. (Even lots of techies don’t want to go through the hassle of installing internal SSDs.) Just be sure to check the speed of the available USB ports before buying an external SSD—don’t overpay for performance you can’t use.
You can also convert internal SSDs
There are so many great external SSDs to choose from, but if you have a spare internal SSD lying around, or if you don’t want to pay the occasionally inflated price tags of external SSDs, you can always opt to put an internal SSD into an external SSD enclosure.
It does cost a little bit more since you need to buy the enclosure—I’m assuming you don’t have spares of that—but there are lots of great SSD enclosures that are under $50.
An external enclosure also makes it easier to upgrade down the line. When the drive inside eventually runs out of space, you can simply swap it out for another—and then you can even swap the original SSD back in later. Keep your games installed on different drives, then put a given drive back into the enclosure as needed.
Easy, convenient, plentiful PC storage
When it comes to storage, the most important aspect is having enough of it. Yes, the faster PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 internal SSDs are nice to have when testing with benchmarks, but the real-world differences between those and other, more affordable options is negligible.
Bottom line: if your laptop or PC runs out of space, it doesn’t matter how fast your drive is. No space is no space!
And when you find yourself in that conundrum, external SSDs are the most convenient way to increase storage capacity. You can plug them in to a range of devices, swap them over, use them for file transfers between devices, and upgrade them later if you want to.
For laptops with limited M.2 slots, for those who don’t want to risk wrecking their warranty, for anyone who just needs more storage space without the hassle of installing, modern external SSDs are a great choice.
Further reading: Why did PC games abandon DirectStorage?
Author: Jon Martindale, Contributor, PCWorld
Jon Martindale is a voracious writer and technology fanboy who loves nothing more than digging into the specs of the latest graphics cards, processors, and displays. He's passionate about everything PC, but also enjoys experimenting with AIs, and covering new standing desks that can help avoid his worst posture habits.