Curse

bokken · Feb 18, 2006, 02:11 PM // 14:11

work laptop - can I run GW from a seperate hard drive?
Here is the situation-

At various times of the year I travel for a few weeks at a time for work.

I use a laptop supplied by my company.
I do NOT want to put ANY software on this laptop.
Can I use a seperate hard drive connected to the laptop by cable with the GW client laded onto it to play GW while on the road?

Not asking IF GW will run on the laptop - I've run GW on slower pcs so not to worried about that , Just want to know if I can use the laptop with out loading any game softaware on it.

I would prefer to run GW in the most descrete manner possible, however,
I am not too concerned about the tech people seeing that I am connected to GW while using the laptop - Im sure they can log everything done on it. I just do not want to load any software - this annoys the tech dept. and they can be protective of the companies equipment.

Uzul · Feb 18, 2006, 02:27 PM // 14:27

you can install gw on an external drive, but keep in mind that there needs to be a registry entry that tells your OS where to find guildwars. that's about it. after reinstalling i just need to execute my gw.exe once and its back installed - ready to play...
so if you have your gw-folder from the home pc, put it on the external drive and then plug it into the company-laptop - click gw.exe and you will be prompted to install (default folder should be the one of your external drive there) - let him make that registry entry and you are ready to go.
that's the most discreet you will get it.
no files on the laptop, if you want you can even go and erase the shortcuts it made.

one thing concerns me: that external drive will be usb2.0 or the new firewire800? cause usb2.0 isnt the fastest ( in case you only have usb 1.0 i wouldn't recommend using an external drive ) but it should be okay if you don't expect the loading times to be fast. O_o

hope it helps.

~Uzul~

Nazo · Feb 18, 2006, 07:33 PM // 19:33

USB2 actually promises higher speeds than the original firewire. Problem is that it doesn't sustain very well and runs fastest in bursts. Then again, a game tends to work in bursts anyway, so it may be alright there. Still, top sustained speed was pretty high. I'd tend to say that a real USB 2 harddrive (not an uber cheap or flash memory type thing, but, something with a decent RPM of at least 5200, preferably 7200 and some cache) should get GW playable at least. Worst case scenario is long load times and occasional stuttering as it reads various bits of data and has to stop to wait for that data to load.

If you have or find a Firewire (even original firewire) harddrive, you'll probably get better results. It can sustain a high speed transfer pretty well. It's actually probably enugh for GW. A good firewire harddrive should perform much like a not so good ultra-ide harddrive (I'm thinking UDMA66, maybe 100,) and I'm still getting by in gaming on my UDMA133 drive (remember, SATA1 only goes up to UDMA150 and even with that, raptors are practically the only drives that truly take advantage of it, and they will eat your PSU for breakfast as well as whatever cooling system you may have -- that 10,000 RPM comes at a cost.)

Remember, no flash based drives. I think the fastest I ever heard of compared more to a CD-ROM than a harddrive, and there's a reason modern games install all their data to the HD then just use the CD for copy protections.