Playing games through a hard drive dock. /u/Maniac_Mikes_Car_Lot Steam on Reddit

I have had an idea for a few years, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
So I was wondering if anyone had tried this before me.

I have a massive steam library, mostly games I have not played. And part of why I have not played them, is because I have not downloaded them. So when I want to try something new, there is always about an hour of waiting for it to download (bad internet speeds, what can you do).

So that got me thinking: what if I just download all my games. I’m sure I could do this with modern internal hard drives, if I was made of money.
But I came up with a slightly “budget” version: Hard drive docks and “cheaper” SSDs.
I could hook up the dock to my computer, slot an SSD in it, download it full of games, yank it out, and slot the next one in. That way I would have “cartridges” of games, I could just hot swap in. This was the concept I had thought out, and I thought this would be a fun thing to have.

But there were couple issues I think this might have.
Firstly, read/write speeds. Would the games run fast enough through a SSD in a dock? Would it make playing a chore with long load times?
And secondly, does Steam work with something like that? I would probably have to reset steam between swaps, but that certainly takes shorter than always redownloading a game.

So, is this an idea that just seems really fun and smart in my head, or has someone done this, and it’s actually bad?
Am I missing some key issues?

I have had an idea for a few years, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
So I was wondering if anyone had tried this before me.

I have a massive steam library, mostly games I have not played. And part of why I have not played them, is because I have not downloaded them. So when I want to try something new, there is always about an hour of waiting for it to download (bad internet speeds, what can you do).

So that got me thinking: what if I just download all my games. I’m sure I could do this with modern internal hard drives, if I was made of money.
But I came up with a slightly “budget” version: Hard drive docks and “cheaper” SSDs.
I could hook up the dock to my computer, slot an SSD in it, download it full of games, yank it out, and slot the next one in. That way I would have “cartridges” of games, I could just hot swap in. This was the concept I had thought out, and I thought this would be a fun thing to have.

But there were couple issues I think this might have.
Firstly, read/write speeds. Would the games run fast enough through a SSD in a dock? Would it make playing a chore with long load times?
And secondly, does Steam work with something like that? I would probably have to reset steam between swaps, but that certainly takes shorter than always redownloading a game.

So, is this an idea that just seems really fun and smart in my head, or has someone done this, and it’s actually bad?
Am I missing some key issues?