Playing Trainz from a Hard Drive - USB vs Firewire

alexl102

Learning... slowly!
With the imminent arrival of T:ANE, I need to create space on my Mac, and part of the way I intend to do this is to relocate Trainz Mac onto an external hard drive, which hopefully allows me to keep TSMac 2 on my computer alongside T:ANE.

So my first request is whether someone could explain how I move TSMac with all its content onto a hard drive?

And secondly, is a USB 3.0 connection fast enough to allow me to play Trainz from the external HD? I've also got a Firewire 800 cable which has a decent transfer speed but is incredibly sensitive to any movement so unless I had my laptop on a table I wouldn't be able to use it (not that I use TSMac1 that often anyway, but it has some sessions & content I want to keep).

Many thanks!
 
Hi Alex,

A USB 3.0 connection should work. I've done that with TS12 and it works okay. It's not quite as spiffy fast as a directly connected hard drive, but it works reasonably well from the USB connection. ESATA is even faster since that is an external extension of the SATA bus that all new hard drives us. I'm not sure about Firewire though. I only used that to connect cameras to a Mac and never used it for hard drives.

John
 
Further to the above, to copy Trainz onto my hard drive, is it as simple as just copying it from the applications folder to the hard drive?

Also, the Trainz Mac 1 file is 7.81GB... To me that surely can't include all the content that's installed, can it?
 
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I have done something similar to what you propose, in moving Trainz to an external drive. But my choice was to do a clean install on the new device, and then move the content from the existing installation on the built in hard drive to the new drive, rather than copying the old installation from the internal hard drive to the new device.

ns
 
An external HD can go bad, more often than an internal HD, so if you rely 5 years of work to an external HD, your entire work can go up in smoke ... So periodically save your routes as a CDP on a second external HD, or save the entire userdata folder (is that the right folder ? ) to it periodically
 
Unless you are running USB 3.0 - don't even try really.

Now, if your internal drive is SSD - then you can't beat that speed.

- Josh
 
So as to keep things separated, I am running (Did the raw Tane installation from DVD) into a 250Gb SSD, external and connected via USB3. Really, I see no difference from TS12 in the SSD inside of the machine. And wait, in the very near future (when I get the money) I plan to use a M2 SSD or PCExpress device. At that point, I hope that if there is any stuttering, it will not be due to storage.
 
An external HD can go bad, more often than an internal HD, so if you rely 5 years of work to an external HD, your entire work can go up in smoke ... So periodically save your routes as a CDP on a second external HD, or save the entire userdata folder (is that the right folder ? ) to it periodically

This used to be the case, the newer drivers run a lot cooler than the older ones, and the enclosures have better power supplies than they used to.

I recently purchased a Envision enclosure for $35. I had a SATA 3GB drive which didn't mount internally in my PC due to the older BIOS, but works fine externally. The enclosure came with 6-screws, a screw driver, and a blood blister which fit perfectly on my left ring finger! :)

The case is actually made of metal and there is no heat, or nearly no heat at all that I can feel on the case and the drive runs very well on the USB 3.0 port.


So as to keep things separated, I am running (Did the raw Tane installation from DVD) into a 250Gb SSD, external and connected via USB3. Really, I see no difference from TS12 in the SSD inside of the machine. And wait, in the very near future (when I get the money) I plan to use a M2 SSD or PCExpress device. At that point, I hope that if there is any stuttering, it will not be due to storage.

That's possible since USB 3.0 is pretty fast, nearly as fast as the internal SATA bus.

The SSD PCI-Express cards are supposed to be very fast, and they are used very often in server environments. Let us know how that plays out.

My only concern with SSDs is lifetime because they don't quite have the longevity of the older drives, though they are getting much better. To be on the safe side, ensure you have a backup of everything just in case there's a hardware failure. Unlike regular hard disks, you can't recover the data from a failed SSD.

John
 
In my many years of fixing PC stuff for people, I found cheap USB external drives to be extremely unreliable, most of the time the actual drives are fine if you take them out of the enclosure and stick them in a PC, usual problem is the USB connector or psu solder tags break off the PCB or develop dry joints from constant plugging and unplugging. Simple fix put the drive in a new enclosure, decent enclosures, usually more expense than most are prepared for I might add, don't suffer these problems.
 
My external HD is an iomega one and it's reliable except for the Firewire800 connection which gets easily knocked out so I normally use USB. Haven't got the time or cash to go to SSD at the moment but just wanted to move stuff off my mac to make room for T:ANE...
 
My external HD is an iomega one and it's reliable except for the Firewire800 connection which gets easily knocked out so I normally use USB. Haven't got the time or cash to go to SSD at the moment but just wanted to move stuff off my mac to make room for T:ANE...

I would try the USB connection and see if it's okay. With the Firewire800 connection doing that, you'll risk corrupting data.

Speaking of SSD's I just upgraded my PC today with a 240GB for my boot drive. In comparison, the 128GB was only a bit less, so went with the bigger one for $170 US. It's an Intel drive and came with all the parts so I didn't need to purchase a mounting kit elsewhere, and also a Speed Demon sticker for my PC case!

John
 
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