Running Skyrim SE and other Steam Games on External HD

[RatB0Y68]

Hi again, I have another question, title pretty much covers it.

 

I intend to reinstall Skyrim SE on an external hard drive, with all my mods, custom meshes, textures, sounds & everything else.

 

I'm doing this as a desperate last resort as neither Skyrim nor Fallout 4 play on my internal drive anymore, they either crash at the Bethesda logo or trigger total system freezes, despite my mod setup remaining unchanged for the past few months.

 

In the past, when this happened, I would uninstall then reinstall the games and that would solve the problem for a while, until the next driver update, BSOD or system freeze, which would require a repeat process.

 

Between the system freezes, blue screens, slowed down performance and random periodic POST and click sounds, I think it's safe to say my hard drive is going off the deep end, hence my new plan to migrate my installation.

 

My question is, will it work reasonably well? I'm using a 3TB WD MyBook, my computer has usb 3.0 ports (if that helps). I know that compared to a new internal hard drive the performance would be lower due to the usb connection.

 

Any insights would be welcomed.

 

EDIT: Nevermind. It doesn't matter, I tried it and I couldn't get it to work, I experienced the exact same problem. Maybe it isn't just my hard drive after all.

[HeyYou]

No, it won't. Data throughput is too slow for the amount of data that needs to move. Loading screens will take forever, and you will likely see stutter at cell boundaries as well. USB simply isn't fast enough for this particular purpose.

 

Can you install JUST the base game on your internal HDD, and see if that will play?

[JimmyRJump]

If you are using an SSD as internal drive, you probably need to update the firmware of the drive. Go to the manufacturer's website, search for your type/series of SSD and see if there's updated firmware available.

 

If you're using a mechanical hard drive, perform a checkdisk on it and see if there's bad sectors. When there are, you get the option to repair them. If there's physical damage then this process won't help.

 

The reason a hard drive fails is often temperatures that get too high. In fact, high temps don't matter that much if they remain constant. A lot of cooling off and heating up cause the edges of a drive to become like a cakewalk because, after having heated up and expanded, a disk never shrinks back to its original size when cooling off. In the end, the edge of the drive becomes like a motorcross circuit with ups and downs and grows larger than the enclosure and then starts rubbing against said enclosure. When that starts to happen, better transfer all the data on the drive to a new one asap. And always keep an eye on disk temperatures. Make sure your PC case has decent ventilation and don't place hard drives too close to one-another.

[RatB0Y68]

No, it won't. Data throughput is too slow for the amount of data that needs to move. Loading screens will take forever, and you will likely see stutter at cell boundaries as well. USB simply isn't fast enough for this particular purpose.

 

Can you install JUST the base game on your internal HDD, and see if that will play?

I tried a reinstall of the base game on my internal HDD a while back (maybe a month ago at most), no mods, no plugins, no skse. Same issue, crash on bethesda logo.

 

I have backed up the entire game install, mods and all, on my external drive. So, when I eventually get my new rig, I can transplant my old installation onto the new drive.

 

My biggest worry is that the data has become corrupted and I'll be transferring borked assets to a new drive, but at least meshes, textures, sounds, scripts and so on can be replaced.

[HeyYou]

Try deleting the ini files in your Documents\My Game\Skyrim(se?) folder.

[RatB0Y68]

I fixed it.

 

For the time being at least...

 

After all this time it was the bloody ReShade dll. For some reason it can't run anymore.

[JimmyRJump]

...()...After all this time it was the bloody ReShade dll. For some reason it can't run anymore.

Thanks for getting back with the source of the problem. Good to hear it got fixed.