Any Bottleneck Running the OS Through a USB?

[Elfear]

Basically I'd like to setup a separate small hdd in an enclosure that I can do all my benchmarking from (3DMark, Aquamark, etc.). Much easier to cut down an OS that you don't use everyday. My limited understanding is that normal IDE drives operate at 100-133MB/s while a USB 2.0 port can handle 480MB/s.

Will I see any performance degradation running the OS from a USB port?

 

[Green Man]

USB 2.0 is 480 Mbps so only 60MBps

Plus you have USB overhead.

 

[HybridSquirrel]

im sure you would but its worth the try you never know...

 

[Elfear]

Ah. Thanks for the clarification. I might experiment and see what happens. Seems like an IDE drive runs at like 40MB/s in normal use so I'll see if a USB port can handle that.

 

[stevty2889]

It will depend some on your motherboard weather or not it will even boot from an external drive. I've tried installing xp to my external, but it never finishes setup. In any case, it will have some overhead and be slightly slower than an internal drive.

 

[Elfear]

Hmm. I'll have to give it a try and see if it works I guess. I'll compare 3DMark scores between the two and determine if the score is affected.

 

[HybridSquirrel]

might as well try it 🙂

 

[greenmaji]

ha!! give PCmark 06 a try. lol

try eSATA