Gamer? If You Still Have An HDD Hard Drive It’s Time to Retire It

Recently, CD Project RED released their expansion pack for Cyberpunk 2077 — Phantom Liberty. One of the requirements was that the game would no longer support HDD drives.

The same requirement has now made its way to Bethesda's release of Starfield. A whole other game is now also removed from your trusty hard drive.

Prefer to watch? Here's the video version of this article on my YouTube channel:

Why are these changes happening? Let's dive in.

Video Games Are Becoming Bigger

Have you seen any triple-A game taking less than 100 GB recently? That's right. Games are becoming bigger and take up more space on your hard drive. But it's not just a matter of quality. Starfield allows you to visit 1000s of planets, so quick information retrieval is a must. And, in true Bethesda RPG fashion, there's a lot of interactable junk rendered around you all the time.

The same reason goes for Cyberpunk. It's an open world. Imagine the horrifying loading screens from a PC limited to 7200 RPM of your hard drive.

The PC Makeup Needs to Change

One of the earlier laws of computer science was Moore's Law. That law stated that computing power would double every 18 months while cost would be cut in half.

With the exponential growth we see today, that law is losing its hold. In the earlier days of computing, you could see the change. As a kid, I grew up with a 286 computer that could run DOS games. Today, my iPhone is stronger than any computer I had in my teens.

In recent years, the CPUs and GPUs are making huge improvements. And those improvements give way to stronger software like the games we like to play. The other parts needed to stabilize the experience are storage and software. Microsoft and Apple are releasing software yearly. It's on you to upgrade your storage.

But some computers from a few years ago could still run today's games. It's only the HDD that those games are no longer supporting.

Don't Replace Your Whole Computer

My PC is from 2 years ago. While my computer can run all the games I love in Ultra settings, I still needed to buy an SSD card to install newer games. And don't get me wrong, I have one already, but I needed to buy another one just for games. Windows itself is also becoming bigger and takes up more space.

If you have a computer from recent years that won't run your games, don't fret! You only need to replace your HDD with an SSD, and you should be good to go. Just don't forget to backup your files every so often. SSD cards might be faster, but they also die irreversible deaths. It would not be easy to recover information lost on a burned SSD. The card might burn instead of breaking the needle, as in HDD drives.

If you plan to buy a new video game soon and use your HDD drive, save yourself some trouble and buy extra SSD storage. It will make things easier.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions about computers, let me know!