Why I Install My Steam Games on a Portable SSD

abdulmanannet77@gmail.comOctober 12, 2025

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Over the years, the Steam client has become exceptionally flexible when it comes to managing your game files, including installing games to external drives. It’s as simple as plugging in your drive and adding it as a library in the “Storage” section of Steam settings.

“But why do that?” you’re probably asking, and that’s exactly why I want to introduce you to the wonders of portable SSD game storage for Steam.

Portable gaming freedom

I have a number of old SSDs that worked as internal drives, but were passed over for my new computers because they are too slow by modern standards. This includes SATA SSDs and PCIe NVMe drives. While they may be slightly outdated for internal use, they’re still fast enough to make a USB port sweat, and many games don’t run any better on a fast internal NVMe drive than they do over USB on these older storage devices.

A USB NVMe SSD in front of a gaming laptop

So why let these records go to waste? I have several PC gaming devices, and thanks to my portable SSDs, I can move my library when gaming between them. Not to mention I can browse different libraries on the same computer. I especially like having the ability to move drives between my handheld and my main gaming laptop.

A speed gain compared to hard drives

Samsung 850 EVO SSD with M.2 SSD and SATA hard drive.

Just like internal hard drives versus SSDs, external SSDs are a lot faster than internal or external mechanical drives. This is why I use a USB SATA SSD as a PS4 game drive on my PlayStation 5. It is at least 4-5 times faster than the spinning rust option. Using my old NVMe drives in external enclosures, I achieved a gigabyte per second in transfer rates, double what an internal SATA SSD can muster, and that’s fast enough for the vast majority of games, even some current-gen titles that aren’t open world and rely on data streaming.

Fix storage problem

I guess this should be obvious, but if I had enough internal drive space to store all the games I wanted to have on hand, I wouldn’t need to use external drives in the first place. Sure, SSD prices have dropped significantly, but I can’t let my old SSDs rot in a drawer with all those juicy gigabytes unused.

This is especially true for my M4 MacBook Pro, which doesn’t allow for internal storage upgrades, and also true for my Lenovo Legion Go handheld, which can be upgraded with a new internal SSD, but honestly it’s more trouble than value at this point. Wait, did I say my Mac?

It’s true, I like gaming on my Mac, but with Baldur’s Gate 3 And Cyberpunk 2077 installed on the main drive, that’s half my storage gone, and I have a long list of games I like to enjoy on my ultra-portable that live happily on a Samsung 500GB external SATA SSD that was originally intended for video editing, but was too slow now that we’ve moved to a 4K pipeline. Here’s a look at the games in question in Steam for Mac.

The steam makes it transparent

The only reason I’ve even considered using external SSDs quite extensively for Steam games is because it’s all so seamless and easy to do. Just add the external drive as a library in the “Storage” section of Steam settings and install a few games on it. Then eject and unplug the drive, connect it to your other Steam PC and add the library again. However, this time it will recognize and add the games already present, assuming they match the license of the logged in user.

Steam storage showing the contents of an SSD.

You can even take your player to a friend’s house or any computer that has Steam installed, log in with your credentials, and immediately play your games from your external drive. It’s that simple.

The few compromises

Obviously, it’s not all sunshine and shotguns: there’s a few compromise. This is why you need to be selective about the types of games you store on these drives. Anything designed for a mechanical hard drive or that doesn’t specify an NVMe drive as a minimum requirement should work fine and, at worst, be playable.

It is also less elegant and practical. Especially with pocket PCs and, to a lesser extent, laptops. Additionally, you need a USB port that’s fast enough to do the SSD justice, and if you’re using your own external SSD using an enclosure, it’s important to know that they’re not all equal. Cheaper ones can cause issues like stuttering or slow overall transfer speeds, so do some research before just getting the one that costs the least money.