iMac external HD speed for gaming/windows?

[Animation]

All,

I just bought the 27" iMac with the quad core i7 setup from my local Apple store. Its awesome. I'm thinking about putting windows 7 on for dual boot, in case I want to do windows-specific gaming. While I could partition my 1 TB drive (to, say, 600/400 or 700/300 in favor of the iMac side) I was wondering about the possibility of external drives.

Would any modern 2.0 USB-powered external hard drive be adequate for installing Windows 7 on, and would it work specifically for gaming? Or am I better off just doing the partition on my internal drive? What about firewire 800? Etc.

Thanks!

 

[alust2013]

I really wouldn't recommend running games from an external. That would be far far slower than partitioning your internal drive

 

[plinden]

You'd be better off partitioning your internal HDD, but if you really want to run stuff from an external HDD, get a FW800 drive. Don't go with USB. I've booted off a clone on a triple interface drive (USB 2, FW400, FW800) and there's a noticeable difference. FW800 > FW400 > USB 2 - but internal disk access is much better than any external.

 

[Animation]

OK then. I may just go with the internal re-partition option. I'm suddenly wishing I'd bought from the online store so I could ge a 2 TB drive. No worries.

Can I re-partition my drive in place? I've barely installed anything on it (COH, Office for Mac).

Also, does anyone know the approximate size that Windows 7 will need? How small can I make my partition and still get the OS and 1 or 2 big games on it?

Thanks for the fast and kind replies!

 

[jinx5000]

Windows 7 (64bit) is around 20gb