Running Guild Wars on a flash drive?

CoverOrDie

Pre-Searing Cadet

Join Date: Oct 2007

630, Illinois, USA

W/Mo

02 Oct 2007 at 14:35 - 1
Pretty straight-forward question; is it possible? This way the game is with me all the time...literally lol

Tab

Tab

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Oct 2006

Under a bridge

Team Quitter [QQ]

Mo/

02 Oct 2007 at 14:43 - 2
Being wrong ftw.

Epinephrine

Epinephrine

Master of Beasts

Join Date: Mar 2005

Ottawa, Canada

Servants of Fortuna [SoF]

02 Oct 2007 at 15:01 - 3
Look in old posts, there's mention of portable GW, run off Ipods/flash drives etc.

Not sure if anyone still supports it though.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...ars-id1759.php

EternalTempest

EternalTempest

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jun 2005

United States

Dark Side Ofthe Moon [DSM]

E/

02 Oct 2007 at 15:06 - 4
Pretty sure you just grab the gw.exe and copy the gw.dat file, on a thumb drive and double click should work. GW is now about 3-4gb now.

Zeph

Zeph

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Jan 2006

Wales, UK

Expect Extreme Violence [EEV]

02 Oct 2007 at 15:11 - 5
Quote:
Originally Posted by CoverOrDie
Pretty straight-forward question; is it possible? This way the game is with me all the time...literally lol
Whilst GW wasn't designed for this type of thing, it should work ok from a flash drive.

The only 2 problems I can see would be:

1. Each time you run the gw.exe for the first time on a system it will 'install' itself. This basically means it will write a few registry entries and some shortcuts in the start menu. This isn't really a problem though, unless you don't want anything at all changing on the host system, as the 'install' will only happen the first time you run the gw.exe on each system. As long as the flashdrive has the same drive letter each time you insert it everything should work fine.

2. USB bandwidth. Flashdrives are no where near as fast as harddrives transfer wise. So loading of new areas will take a lot longer than it normally would.

If you can live with those 2 points everything should be safe.

EternalTempest

EternalTempest

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jun 2005

United States

Dark Side Ofthe Moon [DSM]

E/

02 Oct 2007 at 15:14 - 6
Look for the USB that support Vista "Ready Boost" compatible feature. They are rated at a min xfer speed for use with Vista caching feature to help boost vista speed.

TheZens

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jul 2005

Forgot the Ghostlyyyyy [ftl]

Mo/N

02 Oct 2007 at 15:48 - 7
Your problem is this

Quote:
Why USB Flash Drives make bad system drives.

Flash memory wears out. The more frequently you write to a flash drive, the sooner it will fail. Eventually it won't be able to "hold" the data written to it.

You don't hear about it much, because the numbers of writes we're talking about are in the 10,000 to 100,000 range or higher. If all you're doing is periodically copying files to and from your USB flash drive, you can probably do that for years before you have a problem.

The problem becomes more apparent when you run applications that write to the drive a lot.

Windows definitely writes to the drive a lot. Windows is constantly updating the registry, swap files, and depending on how you use your machine, many, many other things.

If you were to use a USB flash drive as your system drive it might work for some time depending on how you use it. Booting from a flash drive often results in exactly this scenario. But using it constantly or planning to use it long-term is a trip down a one-way path: eventually the flash memory will fail.

This is another reason why you don't want flash memory as RAM: the system writes to RAM at a much more rapid pace than even the hard drive. Flash memory just won't last.

lordpwn

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Mar 2007

R/

02 Oct 2007 at 15:53 - 8
TheZens: Yes, the flash memory does have a limited number of write cycles before it fails, but assuming he's just going to have GW on it - how often does Guild Wars write into the gw.dat file? If it just saves some settings along with the game assets, which are not updated _that_ often, it should last years.

Quote:
Originally Posted by EternalTempest
Look for the USB that support Vista "Ready Boost" compatible feature. They are rated at a min xfer speed for use with Vista caching feature to help boost vista speed.
What do Windows Vista and yet another of its nearly useless (but marketing-friendly) features have to do with the topic of this thread?

EternalTempest

EternalTempest

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jun 2005

United States

Dark Side Ofthe Moon [DSM]

E/

04 Oct 2007 at 19:43 - 9
Quote:
Originally Posted by lordpwn
TheZens: Yes, the flash memory does have a limited number of write cycles before it fails, but assuming he's just going to have GW on it - how often does Guild Wars write into the gw.dat file? If it just saves some settings along with the game assets, which are not updated _that_ often, it should last years.


What do Windows Vista and yet another of its nearly useless (but marketing-friendly) features have to do with the topic of this thread?
Ready boost labeled drives typically have faster read/write speed that standard usb that don't display this feature. Since pc is going to pulling a lot of data from the usb, was thinking you would want something with faster access.

Agree it's nearly useless on Vista.