Are you able to run apps off an external firewire hard drive?

[HeroOfPellinor]

Would you be able to run applications on an external firewire hard drive and have decent performance? How about having video editing software on the internal drive and the video files you're editing on the external drive?

 

[Bobthelost]

You pretty much have to have the programs on the internal discs, but you can certainly process files stored on an external disc, but it'd run like pouring treacle.

 

[SparkyJJO]

I don't know about video editing or firewire, but my USB2 external drive works very well for stuff and it is an old seagate 40gig IDE 2MB cache 7200RPM drive. For example, BF2 still loads at least as fast as my internal drive.

 

[Bobthelost]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
I don't know about video editing or firewire, but my USB2 external drive works very well for stuff and it is an old seagate 40gig IDE 2MB cache 7200RPM drive. For example, BF2 still loads at least as fast as my internal drive.

Then your internal drive is very, very slow, or it's not HD limmited. USB2 is sluglike compared to firewire for transfering files, and firewire is still slower than IDE or SATA.

 

[SparkyJJO]

it is a 5400rpm laptop drive (still 8MB cache tho) but maybe it is because of that or like you said, it isn't HD limited

I stand corrected

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, Executable files do not run on the hard drive. They run in MEMORY. They have to be moved from the drive to mem to run. Type of drive should only make a speed difference while moving the data. Hope this helps a little, Jim

 

[Bobthelost]

But if you're accesssing the HD with the program (which 99.9% of complex programs do) then you'll be limited by the speed it can find the information that isn't loaded into memory. Also you have speed issues with loading the program itself at the start.

5400rpm laptop drives aren't known for thier blinding speed btw