Starbound launches crazy-fast on external drive. Please explain.

So I recently moved my installation of Starbound to an external HDD, and now the game launches in about 10 seconds. This doesn't make a lot of sense, because the game takes about 30 seconds to launch on my computers built in SSD. Can anyone explain why this is the case?

 

If your external hard drive is newer than your internal hard drive, there's a good chance that it has a higher RPM value. The higher your RPMs, the more quickly data will be accessed. It won't increase the performance of your games, but it can speed up load times.

EDIT: I like your keen fashion sense, by the way.

 

My God...

 

No, no. I'm just a humble gamer. Thank-you for the flattery though.

 

I don't... what do you mean by keen fashion sense? Is because I type with blue text?

 

starbound always loads faster a 2nd time
becouse magic

 

Confirmed.

 

No, I missed the part where he mentioned that his internal drive was a SSD. Cut me some slack, it was 1 AM.

Look at your avatar, then look at mine.

 

Also, I'd assume the external would be slower even if it was an HDD because I'd assume it was USB which makes a drive even slower.

 

That's not always the case. The resistance of a USB cable is largely determined by its length, so if you're working with a 12" USB cable on a 7200 RPM external, which is what I use for work, your data can often be accessed faster than it can on an average onboard HDD.

 

I've never heard of length affecting USB speed.

 

Fixed that for ya.

 

Length of cord affects many things, that is the whole reason why a lot of cable companies are now beginning to lay fiber-optic cables instead of the older types. Because of signal degradation. Well that and it doesn't get as much electronic interference....

 

Yea, but wouldn't it make practically no difference up until your usb cable was pretty long?

 

Dunno, honestly I've never owned an external harddrive.

 

I have but I never tested speeds or anything. Most people just use them as backups so speed doesn't matter. I'm just curious about it, so I'm trying to find more info

 

It depends what you're using them for. I don't know how it would affect gaming, per se, but I work in video production, where we can't afford to clutter up our internal hard drives with render files and the like. We select our externals carefully to ensure that performance doesn't suffer when editing.

Resistance affects USB performance, and length increases resistance. Explained rather elegantly here.

 

No it is because it is already pre-cashed in the memory thus making the load faster.