external SSD with UE4

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Hey guys

was thinking about getting this external SSD -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...f_rd_i=desktop

looks pretty good but quick question. If I am working on my laptop for e.g. And I save my UE4 project to the SSD, including everything from materials, maps, mesh files etc then when I go home, can I plug this SSD into my desktop and continue working on my project please?
would this work ok and do you think the SSD would be fast enough?
my desktop and laptop are pretty decent systems but just wanted to know if any of you guys work this way please and if any negatives.
many thanks for any info.

2

Your link is broken. I would expect it to work though, this is no different than copying the project folder to another PC manually / using version control and that works perfectly fine.

3

sorry try this please -

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Passport-Portable-External-Solid-State/dp/B06XNPQQNJ/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1501744291&sr=8-9&keywords=1tb+external+ssd

4

It will work. I’ve been using a reasonable quality USB 3.1 stick for this and it has worked like a charm. Try getting a device with a high read/write speed.

A 1GB UE4 project folder with ¬1000 files writes with an average 100MB/s. You’ll get better results with an SSD obviously.
During usage and normal saving, I can’t tell the difference between a 500 r/w SSD and this stick. I can easily imagine a metric ton of assets having an effect on this, though.

Another solution is to get an enclosure and chuck in an SSD of your choice. Something reliable. Or an EVO version of the Samsung drive in you’re on a budget.

disclaimer: I’m biased as all 3 external discs I ever owned developed faults and eventually failed me in a catastrophic way.

5

I got a Samsung T3 500GB yesterday (450MB/s limit). Copying a large project folder to it from my internal SSD gave similar to Everynone’s figure of about 100MB/s average. Though small files slow this down a lot, so it will depend if your project is code based or not. Copying the content folder only yielded closer to 200MB/s average. Also, it was actually faster than copying the folder from one place on my internal SSD to another (due to read and write from same disk I guess?).

Anyway yeah it will be fine but like @Everynone says, performance differences probably won’t be huge for bulk writes. The main reason I got it was for C++ UE4 builds, they just crawl when intermediate files are on my external HDD, and I’ve run out of internal SSD space to host the relevant files. Haven’t tested the new drive in that respect yet.

EDIT: Should add that my laptop USB ports are 3.0 only, not sure if that will be limiting the drive in practice or not.

6

It should not, 3.0 is still 5Gbps / 640MBs. If there’s any bottlenecking here, it’s pretty negligible.

7

thanks so much for the reply :slight_smile:

8

thank you very much for replying :slight_smile:

9

also guys, sorry i forget to add, i won’t be transferring the UE4 files to either system, i will keep the UE4 project on the SSD and then just plug into either my laptop or my desktop, so will this work please? i mean almost like using my SSD as a stratch disk and opening the file from inside there?

10

It will work just fine. The project folder is self contained.

11

Thank you very much :slight_smile:

12

Hey guys, I am using external SSD and all my files take longer to save, but with assets that are referenced a lot, it’s incredibly long - 2 minutes for base class of enemies (BP class with C++ base class, C++ base class is heavily referenced and BP class has many subclasses) and 15 minutes for a production-quality map where I made few edits in a sublevel. Most of the time it’s stuck on “Processing Exports”

I am working in a company on a pretty big Action RPG, more than 100GB. This happens only to me, only on the machine that is running the project from an external drive. My HW is:

  • i7, 16GB, GTX 1070
  • External SSD - USB-C connector, interface: USB 3.2 Gen 1 (USB 3.0), read speed up to 500MB/s, write speed up to 430MB/s (link)
  • Connected to USB3, info from Device Tree below

2020-11-29_16-14-19.png
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SSD Connection info in Spoiler below.
[SPOILER]

=========================== USB Port20 ===========================

Connection Status : 0x01 (Device is connected)

Port Chain : 3-20

Properties : 0x03

IsUserConnectable : yes

PortIsDebugCapable : yes

PortHasMultiCompanions : no

PortConnectorIsTypeC : no

ConnectionIndex : 0x14 (Port 20)

CompanionIndex : 0

CompanionHubSymLnk : USB#ROOT_HUB30#4&15d54731&0&0#{f18a0e88-c30c-11d0-8815-00a0c906bed8}

CompanionPortNumber : 0x04 (Port 4)

-> CompanionPortChain : 3-4

========================== Summary =========================

Vendor ID : 0x18A5 (Verbatim Americas LLC)

Product ID : 0x0422

USB version : 3.1 Gen ?

Port maximum Speed : SuperSpeed

Device maximum Speed : SuperSpeed

Device Connection Speed : SuperSpeed

Self Powered : yes

Demanded Current : 0 mA

Used Endpoints : 5

======================== USB Device ========================

+++++++++++++++++ Device Information ++++++++++++++++++

Device Description : USB Attached SCSI (UAS) Mass Storage Device

Device Path 1 : \?\USB#VID_18A5&PID_0422#MSFT303C1909050A34#{a5dcbf10-6530-11d2-901f-00c04fb951ed} (GUID_DEVINTERFACE_USB_DEVICE)

Device Path 2 : \?\USB#VID_18A5&PID_0422#MSFT303C1909050A34#{2accfe60-c130-11d2-b082-00a0c91efb8b} (GUID_DEVINTERFACE_STORAGEPORT)

Kernel Name : \Device\USBPDO-1

Device ID : USB\VID_18A5&PID_0422\MSFT303C1909050A34

Hardware IDs : USB\VID_18A5&PID_0422&REV_0100 USB\VID_18A5&PID_0422

Driver KeyName : {4d36e97b-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0002 (GUID_DEVCLASS_SCSIADAPTER)

Driver : \SystemRoot\System32\drivers\uaspstor.sys (Version: 10.0.18362.387 Date: 2019-10-27)

Driver Inf : C:\WINDOWS\inf\uaspstor.inf

Legacy BusType : PNPBus

Class : SCSIAdapter

Class GUID : {4d36e97b-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318} (GUID_DEVCLASS_SCSIADAPTER)

Service : UASPStor

Enumerator : USB

Location Info : Port_#0020.Hub_#0001

Location IDs : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1400)#USBROOT(0)#USB(20), ACPI(SB)#ACPI(PCI0)#ACPI(XHC_)#ACPI(RHUB)#ACPI(SS04)

Container ID : {7981297c-c117-56c3-9627-58fd9ebba1c6}

Manufacturer Info : USB Attached SCSI (UAS) Compatible Device

Capabilities : 0x14 (Removable, UniqueID)

Status : 0x0180600A (DN_DRIVER_LOADED, DN_STARTED, DN_DISABLEABLE, DN_REMOVABLE, DN_NT_ENUMERATOR, DN_NT_DRIVER)

Problem Code : 0

HcDisableSelectiveSuspend: 0

EnableSelectiveSuspend : 0

SelectiveSuspendEnabled : 0

EnhancedPowerMgmtEnabled : 0

IdleInWorkingState : 0

WakeFromSleepState : 0

Power State : D0 (supported: D0, D3, wake from D0)

Child Device 1 : Verbatim Portable SSD SCSI Disk Device (Disk drive) (Disk2)

Device Path : \?\SCSI#Disk&Ven_Verbatim&Prod_Portable_SSD#000000#{53f56307-b6bf-11d0-94f2-00a0c91efb8b} (GUID_DEVINTERFACE_DISK)

Kernel Name : \Device\00000068

Device ID : SCSI\DISK&VEN_VERBATIM&PROD_PORTABLE_SSD\000000

Class : DiskDrive

Driver KeyName : {4d36e967-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\0003 (GUID_DEVCLASS_DISKDRIVE)

Service : disk

*Volume : \?\Volume{4233a69e-0000-0000-0000-100000000000}*

Kernel Name : \Device\HarddiskVolume7

*Mountpoint : E:*
[/SPOILER]