I have a older white 24" imac. The question I have is will it make a diff if I run the whole thing on the external drive. I have heard of some good things about it. I was thinking of some sort of firewire 800 drive. I only have a 250 gig in it now. Would it be in my best interest to have the internal drive replaced with a speedier one or a fast external. Or is it even possible to run all on the external drive. Thanks MC
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Imac running on external drive?
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An internal disk will almost always be faster than an external.
That said it is quite possible to run it off of an external.
That said it is quite possible to run it off of an external.
By using an external drive you are adding extra overhead to the data fetch/send processes. Internal drives will not have that overhead as they connect directly to the inbuilt disk controller which has much faster communication with the system.
That being said, yes you can run external, and Firewire 800 probably is the way to go (far less overhead than alternatives). The absolute best way would be eSata. Don't think iMacs have eSata, though.
That being said, yes you can run external, and Firewire 800 probably is the way to go (far less overhead than alternatives). The absolute best way would be eSata. Don't think iMacs have eSata, though.
The first choice is always to run off an internal drive.
Although, running off an external drive, especially one connected via FW800 is *perfectly fine*. It will appear no slower to the average user. In fact it might be faster considering any external drive will most certainly newer than the 250gig you have in there now.
Heck, I've booted Leopard off my iPod Classic via USB and while it isn't stellar, for doing basic things like Documents and iTunes and Web, you probably never notice.
If your internal drive is getting full (say 70% capacity), then you can get better performance from an external FW800 drive, provided it's not as full, has a higher platter density (may or may not) and larger cache (probably will, if you get a current or larger drive). Also, if your iMac has a Calistoga chipset it will only have a 1.5 gbps SATA interface (as opposed to Santa Rosa's 3 gbps) and the FW800 drive becomes even more attractive.
Look for 1TB or more with 32 mb cache 7200 rpm drive and put it in a FW 800 enclosure. You'll need to initialize the drive with Disk Utility and give it a GUID partition table (from the Partition tab, Options button of DU), then just use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to make a bootable clone.
Not much of an issue with FW800 as those come with their own controllers (unlike USB). Again, other variables involved, but probably not an issue under most circumstances.
From the specs:
External Interface:
eSATA x 1 port
FireWire 800 (1394b) x 2 port
FireWire 400(1394a) x 1 port
USB 2.0 & USB 1.1 x 1 port
FW800 is (not surprisingly) twice as fast as FW400.
If you'll read the specs, it' has all 4 of the major connectors. FW800 is twice as fast as FW400, and eSATA is even faster, as long as the drive inside is that fast.
OWC at www.macsales.com has just about everything storage-wise. Some items can be found elsewhere for cheaper, but it gives you a good overview.
Keep in mind that getting a faster drive when the FW800 is already saturated won't make it faster.