How capable an external hard drive is?

I want to find out how capable an external hard drive is. Is there any advantage to running all non-operating system programs from an external drive such as antivirus, microsoft office etc...?

First of all, can it be done? Secondly, will my notebook run more efficiently with less "clutter"? Forgive me for my ignorance to the subject but this forum seems to have much more savy people than me on this subject.

My intention is to just take the brand new computer and download nothing onto it. I would like to put every piece of software (post purchase of the computer) on an external hard drive to maintain optimal performance of the computer. I know that anti-virus programs can bog a computer down considerably and was curious if installing this extra stuff on an external drive would change anything or if it is even possible.

i got interested inur post and did a bit research and dis is wat i came up with

All advice that I've received say that programs should be placed on the internal drive (drive C:, in other words). The direct connection means its faster to access than an external drive which has to go through an interface.

The same advice says that data can be place in the external drive. Since data tends to expand, putting it in the C: drive tends to slow down the computer because it has to look for data and run the program from the same drive. If your drive is fragmented, the problem gets worse.

Regular defragmentation is important to keep your PC running at optimum speed. Regular cleaning of unused files and registries is also important. Finally, having a lot of memory really helps a lot.

In short:* Put your programs in the C: drive
* Put your data in a separate drive, either a separate partition or an external drive.
* Defrag frequently
* Clean frequently
* Install as much memory as you can

Oh, before I forget, save your files to an external drive that you connect and disconnect after saving. An alternative is to burn it into a CD. This way, if your hard drive crashes, you at least have your most recently saved files safe in storage.

Hello this is a great topic

Well the following info may be useful to you

Yes it can be done, and has been done since the Commodore 64

The connection is important. The fastest is the most expensive.

Will it save you any problems? No

Unfortunately, Whatever is on the external drives is down loaded to run on your computer. Your computer will use its virtual memory on your default drive.

The drive is not the computer, it is only a storage area. Where it is located does not make a difference.

You could introduce problems with the extra connections by disconnecting and reconnecting the cables.

Then you have the other problem. Even the original programs have many errors.

Unless of course you went back to the external drive that came with the Commodore 128 which had its own processor.

hmmm........

The Usefulness of an external hard drive in my opinion is immense I have two 300 gig external. This allows me to move very BIG files around. As for data storage I suggest that you NEVER keep data on the same drives that the system is on even if is partitioned. Let me pose this question what happens if the 0 sector of a drive takes a dump? even if is partitioned the hole thing is toast. Ask me how I know this. I suggest if you want an easy way to back up the data go to Microsoft and get the sync toy I have been running for about a year and it works great. As for degfragmenting get diskeeper it is an automatic defragmenter. The default defragmenter was set-up to run when the drive reached 20% fragmentation. This was fine the largest hard drive was 1 gig. Think what 20% of 250 gig hard drive that