I'm thinking of buying a 3.5" usb external HD(maybe a 320 gb unit) to
extend my laptop disk capacity(only 100 gb).
But I have two questions(at the moment) on the matter:
1)If I install my programs on the external unit, will they run more slowly?
Yes they will. Since I doubt you have over 100GB of
applications, you should probably move some of the large
data files (movies?) onto the external drive and run apps
from the laptop drive.
However, some laptop drives are faster than others, but
practically all are slower than a modern desktop drive.
Thus, while external USB is a penalty, it's not as large a
penalty as if you were running the apps over USB interface
on a desktop system.
In other words: the disk on the laptop(5400 rpm) will be faster that
the external one or not? (due to usb connection speed)
Yes
Frankly, I'd think about getting a larger notebook drive to
replace the present one, duplicating the present one with
both attached to a desktop system using laptop drive
adapters, then putting the old drive in a smaller, more
portable external enclosure. That way you have more files
with you.
Another alternative would be a wireless NAS, which is
substantially slower than USB2 but would allow file transfer
without wires and if you have a desktop system as well,
would allow it access to these files (or just put the drive
in the desktop system if you're typically leaving it turned
on, and add a wifi card to that system if it doesn't have
one yet).
2)Can I Install a S.O. on this disk?
Why would it need a Steam Outlet? ;-)
Yes if the system can boot to USB (and can do so with the
particular enclosure you select) you could install and run
an OS, but some of them (like Windows) won't run from USB
due to loading the OS USB driver too late in the boot
process. The booting would halt before finished.
There's a hack to make it load the USB driver earlier like
it would a PATA driver, which you might find via Google
search. In practical terms MS would tell you that you can't
do it, is unsupported/impossible/etc. If you meant a
different OS, it would depend on which one... you might also
Google for terms including that OS name and USB Boot.
