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So I've noticed that right after I switch to using an external SSD for my drive D (there were problems and I have to replace the in laptop drive d with an external), I've been having much more issues with FFXIV than ever before, when I used to have no problem logging into the game at all before this. Does FFXIV does work specifically bad with an external ssd? I'm thinking of finally giving in and buying a new laptop for this, so this can help influence the decision.
This game has issues with external, removable and secondary drives, it is recommended to install the game on the same drive as the OS (usually C).
If you can't fit it on the C drive, then a secondary drive should be okay, but can cause issues. Note that in 7.0 the required space for the game files changes from 80GB currently, to 140GB after the update.
I've run the game off of drive D for nearly a decade at this point, so, no, secondary drives do not cause issues.
The wrong sort of USB cabling, on the other hand, can cause issues. For example, if your system utilizes USB 2.0 for connection to an external SSD, do not anticipate SSD speeds. A bad, or failing, USB cable can also be a major source of problems.
As far as logging into the game, you mentioned "problems". Problems with time? Problems with connectivity? The problems you had with an internal drive D may be an indicator that there is more of an issue with your laptop in general, totally unrelated to whether you're using an external SSD or not.
I recommend that the external drive is, at minimum, a blue plug being fitted into a blue USB socket because this gives you most of the benefit that you really want from an SSD (which is fast load times).
SSDs suffer from a problem which is that each individual cylinder can run out of read/write cycles. Once this happens, the file using that cylinder becomes corrupted. This means your game assets will randomly become corrupted and cause your game to crash eventually in different ways/situations.
This never happened to me with a HDD, but with an SSD it has already been a problem for me multiple times. If you copy+paste each individual file in the game directory, it eventually will fail to copy the ones that are corrupted. In many cases the only way to properly get the files fix anyway is to fully redownload the game because SE doesn't seem to have a simple scan and repair system that saves time and bandwidth. This can also happen just to your configuration files in Documents\My Games.