# Running a game (WoW) from a thumb drive: pointless? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [December 19, 2017, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-a-game-wow-from-a-thumb-drive-pointless/804884 "2017-12-19T20:18:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2017, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-a-game-wow-from-a-thumb-drive-pointless/804884/1 "2017-12-19T20:18:42Z")
If I was to copy my World of Warcraft install to a USB thumb drive, would it improve or degrade performance? Or, as an in-game friend suggested, quickly destroy the thumb drive with all of the constant reading/writing? I got the wild idea (haven’t actually tried it yet) to use a thumb drive as sort of a pseudo-SSD, mostly because I’m playing the game on a horribly outdated computer and load times are insane. My friend with the SSD can log in and out three or four times while I’m sitting there waiting to finish loading into Dalaran in the Broken Isles. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2017, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-a-game-wow-from-a-thumb-drive-pointless/804884/2 "2017-12-19T20:52:16Z")
It is likely pointless. I doubt your HDD read/write speeds are your loading bottleneck. That said, it’s easy enough to test. USB drives degrade with repeated rewriting, but not with repeated reading, so the ideal would be to have your main files stored on the fast disk but the game’s cached files written to your HDD. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2017, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-a-game-wow-from-a-thumb-drive-pointless/804884/3 "2017-12-19T21:40:25Z")
> [@typoink](#): > > It is likely pointless. I doubt your HDD read/write speeds are your loading bottleneck. Yeah, it’s not my main problem - my video card, which has been “officially unsupported” by the game since 2012 is the main culprit. I’m going on the “any little improvement might help” theory. > [@](#): > > That said, it’s easy enough to test. USB drives degrade with repeated rewriting, but not with repeated reading, so the ideal would be to have your main files stored on the fast disk but the game’s cached files written to your HDD. That would be easy enough to configure. I’d really hoped to get a brand new computer with my last tax refund, but that didn’t work out. Maybe the next one, and I’m definitely getting an SSD. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2017, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-a-game-wow-from-a-thumb-drive-pointless/804884/4 "2017-12-19T22:32:53Z")
It looks like this was meant to be in the Game Room. I’ll move it there from CS. ---
**Author:** ![Clawdio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d07c76/32.png) [@Clawdio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clawdio)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2017, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/running-a-game-wow-from-a-thumb-drive-pointless/804884/5 "2017-12-19T22:48:57Z")
FWIW, its not every time, but i think loading Broken Isles Dalaran just sucks for everyone sometimes. My guild has come to refer to it as wiping to loading screen boss.