The problem is the interface but also the fact you use a USB flash drive. USB 2.0 is very slow, it is rated up to 480mbps so around 40mb/s at maximum and even then it has its own overhead + your games will have a lot of small files which tanks IO performance so the actual speed will be much lower

Not to mention that USB flash drives typically use the absolute worst NAND flash ever known to man with an extremely simple controller that doesn't have much of a logic in it

You are going to run a game off a flash drive? Yikes.

How old is this laptop that it's only USB 2.0? That would mean it's older then approx 2010

Is it just the old flash drive that only supports up to USB 2.0?

At the very least you need a USB 3.0 External HDD not a flash drive. Even USB 3.0 flash drives are extremely slow

yes, usb 2.0 has very low iops, which chokes the way steam downloads/installs
usb cannot do many read/writes at the same time
its ok when dealing with 1 file at a time, but not multiple

Especially with a flash drive... with USB 2.0 all you going to get is maybe 10-20Mbps and that's it

Have USB 3.0, 3 1, 3.2 and go buy a decent HDD or SSD.

A game that large I can bet needs some decent specs and the game is never going to run right being housed and ran off of something connected to USB 2.0

Can you back up a game to the usb for future re installation? Click on game in library - manage create back up. Basically removing a game but keeping the back up file to reinstall it.

Originally posted by Set-115689:

Can you back up a game to the usb for future reinstallation?

Yes you can.
But you also don't need to use any backup methods. You can easily have Steam see the game that you have all the files for.

turns out i put the USB in my USB 2.0 slot instead of the 3.0, oops

Originally posted by Justplayinghalo:

turns out i put the USB in my USB 2.0 slot instead of the 3.0, oops

hahaha......yeah one is blue for a reason.....now i hope the drive is 3.0........

even usb 3.0 flash drives will be limited by their flash storage speed
which is still slower than usb 2.0 data rates