Using an external USB drive to run apps from?

[BertieBigBollox@gmail.com]

Is this going to be too slow?

Compared to say an internal IDE (PATA) or SATA drive?

 

[Doug W.]

"BertieBigBollox@gmail.com" <bertiebigbollox@gmail.com> wrote in
message
news:0ffa8ca9-9c8f-40ab-a4c2-8a52a8e12b69@o8g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
> Is this going to be too slow?
>
> Compared to say an internal IDE (PATA) or SATA drive?
==
I think you know what the answer is already.
==

 

[Mark Adams]

"BertieBigBollox@gmail.com" wrote:

> Is this going to be too slow?
>
> Compared to say an internal IDE (PATA) or SATA drive?
> .
>

Depends on what the apps are. Only you can decide what is "too slow".

 

[spamlet]

"BertieBigBollox@gmail.com" <bertiebigbollox@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:0ffa8ca9-9c8f-40ab-a4c2-8a52a8e12b69@o8g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
> Is this going to be too slow?
>
> Compared to say an internal IDE (PATA) or SATA drive?

Depends how old, how full, and how big, your internal drive is. I was
amazed at how fast files transfer to our usb 'MyBook' 500gig drives. These
are much faster than our on board 40 gig drive.

S

 

[Twayne]

In news:0ffa8ca9-9c8f-40ab-a4c2-8a52a8e12b69@o8g2000yqo.googlegroups.com,
BertieBigBollox@gmail.com <bertiebigbollox@gmail.com> typed:
> Is this going to be too slow?
>
> Compared to say an internal IDE (PATA) or SATA drive?

It's going to vary. I thought it would be painfully slow but my sister
started doing it as she began running out of disk space. Most programs
worked fine with only a longer time to get started than otherwise. Once the
program is read into RAM, it all worked fine.
So, it will work, but it's a bandaid solution. The proper solution is to
either get a larger drive or add another drive to the system. An external
drive is much better put to use as a backup holder so your backups are off
the computer and can be completely disconnected from the computer. Backups
should never reside on an internal drive.
And if you aren't doing any kind of backups, you're definitly making a
mistake there as you'll find out when you have to manually reinstall
everything when something finally trashes that drive on your or it simply
dies of old age.

This is a subject with a lot of ymmv and differing opinions; everyone has to
decide for themselves what they want to do. Personally I'd urge you to get a
larger drive or install and additional drive and not use the external drive
to install programs to.
Caveat: Even though you install program/s to the external drive, that
does not mean that it is ALL on the external drive. Certain parts of
programs HAVE to reside on the boot drive, and those will still be put on
the boot drive.
Plus of course, your computer now becomes dependent on the external drive
and cannot run those programs withou it. It's just one more piece of junk to
bring along to have it worked on, adjusted, repaired, moved to another room,
whatever.

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[BertieBigBollox@gmail.com]

On May 13, 7:13 pm, "spamlet" <spam.mores...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> "BertieBigBol...@gmail.com" <bertiebigbol...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:0ffa8ca9-9c8f-40ab-a4c2-8a52a8e12b69@o8g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Is this going to be too slow?
>
> > Compared to say an internal IDE (PATA) or SATA drive?
>
> Depends how old, how full, and how big, your internal drive is.  I was
> amazed at how  fast files transfer to our usb 'MyBook' 500gig drives.  These
> are much faster than our on board 40 gig drive.
>
> S

Fairly old IDE drives. 320gb or so.

 

[The poster formerly known as 'The Poster Formerly]

BertieBigBollox@gmail.com wrote:
> Is this going to be too slow?
>
> Compared to say an internal IDE (PATA) or SATA drive?


I do it from a U3 drive all the time and do not have performance/speed
problems.