How Do I Install to an External Drive

[downunder]

Hi Guys, Just a question. I just bought a 1 terrabyte external HD so i could get all the movies and other junk off my computer so it will play sh3 a little easier. I have 2 installs of sh3 on my internal, one my league game and the other stock. I was wondering if i could install one on the external HD and load GWX and see what all the fuss is about. Can i do it? and what would i need to do.

Cheers

Downunder

[nirwana]

Thats fairly easy. Move the complete GWX modified sh3 folder to the external drive and launch the game via sh3.exe from there. The files from the game in "personal folder" will remain on ure bootdrive but u can make occasional backups of it if u like.

U can also copy the stock sh3 gamefolder and apply the gwx mod to the copy on the external drive. If u need more then one sh3 installation use multish3 to enable different sh3 folder in personal folders.

[downunder]

Will it give me the choice to install to the ex HD or will it default C: I will have to change the file names of the other 2 wont I ?

[geosub1978]

You can alter the instaling rout to the external drive but obviously you will be able to play it from the external drive only on the PC where you installed it, because of the registry.

[downunder]

Ok i now have a copy on my ex hd, can i load GWX as one install or do i have to install all these mods seperatly

[nirwana]

Thats the thread which explains what to do to install gwx 2.1:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=102096

[Pisces]

I think it's a very bad idea to place your SH3 folder on a USB drive. The usb 2.0 standard has a maximum throughput of 480Mbit/second. Where as the SATA 3Gbit standard can put out, well 3 Gigabit/second. The amount of bytes throughput may not be as simple as dividing by 8 bit but relatively speaking you're better of using the internal drive (I took a guess, sata 3Gbit has become a standard thesedays) for speedy games. I don't know what your drive or mainboard has for HD interfaces, but I'm pretty sure the USB 2 drive is going to bottleneck. I would leave that just for storage or things that do not need fast throughput.

PS. also a bad idea to just copy the game folder overthere. Windows (no matter which version) often put's some settings in it's registry when installing programs, and certainly Sh3. Unless you know how to find them and extract them from the registry, then edit any folderpaths that could be contained in those keys, and add the modified keys back again to the registry, it may not play as it is supposed to. Or a future re-installation process may go wrong because of leftover-registry settings. ... If you don't screw up your system while you're doing it... I would suggest re-installation instead of folder copying if you really want to move SH3 to the usb drive.

[downunder]

Cheers Boys, thanks for the info, I suppose seeing i have made all this room on my internal HD i should just keep it there then. Thanks Pisces for the tech talk thats what i wanted.

Downunder

[nirwana]

Trust me there are no registry entries which prevents running the game from another location then the original location assigned during the installation process. All what is required is that the stock game is once installed on the boot partition/drive to fill in the unlock keys. I am even be able to run the game from my burned backup dvd though of cause i cannot add or remove any mods then.

I run TMO on my untouched old bootable XP HD for many months without any issues with my newer vista 64bit installed on an extra HD which was added after TMO was installed.

To be sure of that i just launched a backup of gwx on the old xp drive and could continue a saved game i created with the gwx installation on my vista sys a few hrs ago.

[johnno74]

Yep I can confirm 100% that SH3 doesn't put anything in the registry. Install it where you like, then copy the install folder to another location and it doesn't matter - all you have to do is update the shortcut in your start menu.

When I got my new laptop, I copied the SH3 folder from program files on my desktop over to c:\games\ on my laptop and it worked with no issues at all.

And if you want to run it from an external drive, then fine, the performance hit would not be enough to bother you, if you could notice it at all. Yes SATA can transfer 3Gb/sec, but no hard disk can keep up with that anyway. I can copy files to/from an external hard disk (2.5" HD even) over usb2 at 50 MB/sec, which is fine for most things.

Hell a guy I worked with used to run virtual machines from an external hard disk and the performance hit wasn't enough to bother him.

[geosub1978]

Every program that prompts you to browes a directory for installation doesn't matter where you are going to install it! In the windows registry there is not such an input (but there are others inputs of the game of course). The only input/output is on the desktop shortcut (*.bat file). In this case, if you copy-paste the folder to another location you have to run the SH3.exe from the installation folder or make your own shortcut. E.g. I have SH3 - SH4 on a 40GB partition of my HD (320GB) and they run very quickly and smoothly with very good loading times for both (GWX-WAC).

[Pisces]

I never said you couldn't play SH3 from a location it wasn't installed to previously. Just that it might be risky. And that you are out on your own if trouble arises. I mean, the game could go funny. It probably won't disrupt anything other than your playing mood.

If you run the regedit program (part of windows: startmenu, run, enter "regedit", OK) and search (DON'T modify ANYTHING in that treelist if you do not know what you are doing) for the text "Silent hunter" it should come up with a couple of hits in some "Classes" folder somewhere in the hierarchy. Maybe they are harmless if you don't have them if you are using an 'backed-up' sh3 folder. But maybe they are needed during uninstall, if you do need to make a completely new install on your system. I like to be on the safe side with this game. And preffer to keep my registry clean. So go ahead if you feel like trying. I've done that often enough but paid my price re-installing win-blows far too often.

I knew I was on thin ice with that SATA USB comparison. HDs are much slower than making SATA really sweat. But that USB latency is added on-top of the intrinsic HD's latency. It would make the delay bigger if a file was needed in the middle of play (but maybe Sh3 does all the loading before gamestart, and it's all stored in virtual mem). But when it comes to games data rates are of the essence. So why make it worse.

[nirwana]

apropo uninstall...interesting is that a static registry entry (i forgot what value it was i found it somewhere in another forum) for unlocking is not attached to any sh3 or ubi string and wont be removed uninstalling the game. As long as this entry is still there i can uninstall and reinstall sh3 as often as i like without being bothered with the unlock key procedure again. Dunno if its the same with DVD based versions.

sh4 requires to unlock it everytime with the DVD key or online.