Playing games off hard drive using ESR?

Hello, I'm new to this forum.
My question lies in PS2 backup playback. Is it somehow possible to store PS2 games on an external (USB) hard drive, such as the Western Digital My Passport, and play them off that using a memory card that has Free McBoot installed onto it?
I'm not asking you to write a tutorial because that would require you to work which is of course very unfair. Just a few key words I can Google (or if the answer is no, a 'no') would be fine.


Some potentially important information about the console:
PS2 Slim version SCPH-77004
Free McBoot version 1.8
Apparantly it also has something called 'HD Loader' which certainly sounds like something relevant to this matter, but I feel like it would only (properly) work on phat PS2s with internal hard drives. True/false?
This is for backups of games I own or have previously owned (thus once upon a time paid a valid license for) myself.

Thanks in advance.

open ps2 loader 0.9 SMB preferred

Thank you, that would be all, gave you a 'like' if that's any good.

Open PS2 Loader or OPL can play games from internal HDD, USB, or SMB. HDLoader is only for internal HDD. SMB is a Samba shared file on your computer or on a network attatched hard drive. That is a better method than USB, but you would need your computer on and your USB plugged into to it and your ps2 connected to the network. The ps2 has USB 1.1 which is much slower than your computers USB connection or your ps2's network connection. Most games work just fine from USB, however many have jumpy and unwatchable cutscenes because of the speed limitations, but usually gameplay is unaffected. I'm not sure if your particular USB HD will work with the ps2, most do work. Any USB dirve plugged into the the ps2 must formatted to FAT32 in order to work.