New Laptop - External Drive Question

[sasingle1]

My old Dell XPS (435MT) desktop no longer has the video card capabilities that I need since I upgraded to X12.  Given the age of the desktop (and its components), I feel that I have no other choice but to bite the bullet and upgrade.  I mainly work at my home office connected to two 24" monitors, but also need the portability of a laptop at times.

 

Looking for a budget option so considering the Dell G3 15 for $850 with the upgrade to i7 5GHz 6 cores.  However, it doesn't seem like an easy option to upgrade the SSD size without paying much more.  Could I get by with the 256GB SSD and then use an external hard drive for files other than programs (e.g. libraries on Chief Architect, plan and layout files, pictures, video, etc.)?  Would this work, or would this type of setup slow the system since it has to access from an external drive?

 

 

Thanks in advance for any input.

  

[lbuttery]

yes, you can use an external drive to save all your projects etc

 

chief used to get "grumpy" if the main files were stored on an external drive

check preferences and look at the list of files that they allow you to specify where they are located

 

probably best to have a chat with CA's tech support to verify your needs

but many chiefers use external drives

 

carbonite does charge more to backup an external drive

but I think it is worth it

 

also check out external SSD drives:

https://www.amazon.com/External-Solid-State-Drives/b?ie=UTF8&node=3015429011

 

Lew

[Electromen]

I bought an ALIENWARE M15 R3 GAMING LAPTOP, on Thursday,  The RAM is soldered to the motherboard and is not upgradable.  You may want to check that on the one you're looking at.

[sasingle1]

I decided to go with the Acer Nitro 5 17.3" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti - 512GB SSD for $750 at BB.

 

Setup to be easily upgradable for memory and storage - will likely be adding some more RAM and possibly a SATA drive.

 

Thank you all for your input.  I have an inquiry to Tech Support regarding the use of an external drive if needed - will update once I receive the response.

 

 

[GeneDavis]

Why not cloud storage?  Dropbox is pretty seamless?

[MarkMc]

3 hours ago, sasingle1 said:

with the Acer Nitro 5 17.3" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti -

FWIW if you do much rendering X13 will supposedly be supporting RTX video cards. Would bust your budget though.

 

I tested a 1TB external M2 on usb-c ($150). Small plan is slightly slower to load, barely noticeable. Big plan was noticeable but ok, though I didn't do extensive tests/comparison to working off the C drive.

Read speed on external drive is max 1050 Mb/sec, IRL transfering lots of files runs about half that. For referance my C drive is max 3500 mb/s. Only tested plan files.

[Kbird1]

7 hours ago, sasingle1 said:

I decided to go with the Acer Nitro 5 17.3" Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i5 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti - 512GB SSD for $750 at BB.

 

Setup to be easily upgradable for memory and storage - will likely be adding some more RAM and possibly a SATA drive.

 

Thank you all for your input.  I have an inquiry to Tech Support regarding the use of an external drive if needed - will update once I receive the response.

 

 

 

If you budget will stretch , you might want to consider the Acer Helios 300 with RTX 2060 --- has good reviews for a budget Gaming Laptop,

and is on sale at BB and Amazon for about $1100 currently......it has twice the ram  (16GB), 6 cores, and the RTX card which could become necessary

with X13 as Mark mentioned.