Hi, I know that booting Linux from a USB causes lower performance for games (those compatible with Linux of course and with official Linux installs)… do SSD do the same? Do they eat up your ram like USBs do?
Thanks!
If it is an external SSD, the fact that it is external is less relevant than the interface connection.
What you are really comparing is the interface, if the external SSD is using USB interface, then it might be better quality memory than a generic USB flash drive, but it will still be limited by the USB interface between the PC and the SSD (And if it USB 2.0, it will be even slower than USB 3.0).
If it is using eSATA or something like that, it’ll be pretty much as good as an internal SATA SSD.
I’d guess the SSD would have a better memory controller than a generic thumb drive, so it would probably out-perform even over the same USB interface.
But I think in lots of real-world use cases, that you won’t really notice the difference too much.
No. Loading data from an internal SSD should pretty much always be the fastest option.
Also, I’m not aware of any extra RAM usage with USB storage, that’s not really the typical issue with loading data from USB. The issue being that USB interfaces are usually slower than the internal connections available for storage.