XP on External HD

[soisauce001]

I haven't found thread yet. I wanted to open discussion on the possibility of installing xp on an External HD and being able to boot from a External HD.

I use my MBP mostly to make videos and stuff like that. I'm still waiting for final cut pro to come out UNI.. But for now I'll settle with iMovie HD.. Anyways, I have a 80G HD and I really don't want to partition it. I want to be able to use that space for rendering and saving and what not.

To have XP installed on an external would make my life easier. I just plug that sucker in and XP pops up.. To be completely honest, I think I'd only use XP to play games.. that's all. haha.

So anyways, if i sound like newblet.. it's cuz i am.. but if we can being discussion on the possibility of booting from and external HD, i would greatly appreciate it..thanks..

[cnakeitaro]

According to the Wiki booting from an external drive is possible, but not yet available just due to the installer. It will become available at one point, which will probably be the most ideal situation. But, I do want to ask a quick question though. Using a USB2 or FW external, what kind of performance should we get compared to an external. 400mb/s seems incredibly fast, but is it fast enough?

[Quest]

that depends on the firewire or usb2.0 controller used in you external enclosure.
the fastest firewire 400 controllers allow transfer rates up to 50MB/s, but a lot of controllers limit the speed to ~20-30MB/s.

for comparison:
Travelstar 4K120 (4200 rpm) ->max.380Mb/s
Travelstar 5K100 (5400 rpm) ->max.493Mb/s

with a fast fw400 or usb2 drive the transfer rates are comparable to the ones of an internal 2.5" Notebook drive with 4200-5400 rpm.
best regards
Quest