WOW on a USB Key?

[Ewarwoowar]

Following on from the thread about running WOW on an external hard drive at work :shocked: I found that my work PC is so locked down that it won't recognise my external hard drive, but it DOES recognise my USB keys:wink: .

So, I'm about to order a new USB key to put WOW onto but, as my copy is at home and I don't want to wait until tonight, could some kind soul have a look at their WOW folder and tell me how big it is please?

In the interest of others thinking of doing this could you let me know the sizes for both WOW and WOW-TBC?

Many thanks in advance.
Paul

[Ewarwoowar]

Bump! :grin:

[Kalos]

Please don't bump with only ten minutes past. Take one look at the other threads, they all take hours if not days to get responses. Plus, bumping is against the rules.

It shall work, but it'll ruin your USB drive (Not a USB Key, that's actually a completely different technology regarding security, not data storage, so I assume you meant 'drive') It uses flash memory, which is only meant to be addressed to a limited amount of times before it dies, a limitation of the technology. Not a problem as it could do thousands of reads and writes, but how many thousands of files are there which the game could individually read as you go around the world and new data has to be loaded. You'd kill the USB stick, turn it into a paperweight, within two months.

That, and you'd constantly be lagging. The USB bus speed is far too slow compared to a Hard drive's interface. Gameplay would be automatically crappy, and that's not counting the budget cheapo parts they put in office computers. You'd be lucky if they had enough Ram to boot the game upon. So you have an interface thats going to be a pain, a drive that'll quickly die, an office computer that wasn't made with the expensive power of gaming...

And this is ignoring the fact that they obviously don't want you playing games at work. Work at work, don't give in to your addiction. Else disiclinarary action would be a likelyhood. It strikes me as a rather stupid plan, to enjoy a few extra hours gaming while on the payroll to be doing something else.

[Ewarwoowar]

Hi Kalos,

Sorry about the bump - it won't happen again :embarassed: . I did try to delete my post first, but don't seem to have the option to do so.

No you got me wrong - I do mean a key. I'm aware of the lifecycle problems with USB keys (I use one to run a development web server on), but I'm not planning on playing WOW that much at work.

The PCs at work are quite good specs with lots of RAM as we are using some heavy resource-hungry development software, so WOW shouldn't be a strain for them.

And as for playing on company time: that's a no-no. I simply want to be able to have a quick half-hour during the occasional lunchtime, that;s all.

Addicted? Nah, my last proper game was over a week ago - so I;m not that far gone yet.:grin:

Cheers,
Paul.

[Kalos]

By common misnomer many people come to call the data storage devices that fit on thier Keyrings as USB Keys certainly, but tecnically the title is patented as a security token used to replace passwords with a physical device, or as a method to enhance security measures by removing the reliance on a code, to which any stranger could find out and abuse. They don't have anything to do with storage. I know I'm nitpicking, public popular misconceptions being corrected, one person at a time.

Well, go for it then. If you feel you can do it without negatives, then try it.

[Ewarwoowar]

Aah, my misunderstanding there, Kalos.

I just re-read your post and realise that, yes, we meant the same thing. I usually refer to these things as USB drives as well, but know that most call them keys (even the packaging seems to refer to them as keys more often than not!) which is why I used the term.

Also, I know that many people think of USB drives as being external hard drives connected via a USB cable, confusing the issue even more.

I still want to give it a go, but need to know what size I need to order, so if anyone could oblige me and let me know the storage footprint for WOW and WOW-TBC I'd be very happy.

I'll be sure to let everyone know how it goes and what problems I encounter. I may well find that the whole experience sucks, in which case I'll put the USB key/drive/gizmo/whatever to other uses, but I'll let you know in due course.

Cheers,
Paul.

[Kalos]

I'd be thinking an eight gig stick might not cut it, my folder, free of screenshots, is over 11 Gig. The stick would need to be at least this big to contain the base game files it need to run, and all the updates to the game.

[earindur]

its a terrible idea, flawed with too many to mention them all:

registry keys missing
the diabolically slow speed of the usb bus
the size of the WoW folder

the list goes on. you would be best not to waste your time.

[Penny]

My WoW folder is around 5 Gig. after I remove the update files. You can copy the 'World of Warcraft" folder from a Program Files dir to a DVD and move it to a different machine and play it just fine, so putting it on a thumb drive should work OK, if you can find one big enough. Since it would be seen as a drive though, I sure don't know how you can use one of those and not use an external usb drive...

Then only thing I see being a problem is speed. It would truly suck.

[ancan]

Old thread, I know, but for your knowledge, I'm running WoW from a Cruiser Flash Voyager GT 16GB as i write this. Just played around for 5 minutes but there's been no speed issues so far. I've been running wow from a external 2.5" USB disk before, and that was faster than running it from the local hard disk, so I guess that having the game on a different drive from the OS and pagefile compensates for the slower USB-bus.

The 8GB version of the Voyager GT is faster than my 16GB, so if you can get the WoW-folder to fit, it's a better choice.

Registry settings are not an issue. WoW is such a nice application, that you can just install it once, then copy the game folder to wherever you like - even another computer - and it will run.

I don't think flash memory life span is an issue either. AFAIK, only writes affect the memory durability, and a game like WoW must be 99.5% reads. Plus, all modern memory controllers for flash memory have a algoritm that distributes writes to different cells all the time, so no cell is more worn than another.

[Artad]

The only thing I would worry about if you're taking this to work is that the firewall ports are open for you to play it thru.

Running from a USB device shouldn't really impact too much, of course if it's the slower 1.1 USB you may well have speed issues, 2.0 and 3.0 shouldn't be too much trouble tho.