On Aug 20, 2006, at 9:34 PM, b3 wrote: > I'm having a bit of trouble finding a definitive answer to this. > > Can I boot my intel based macbook from an external USB drive? easily?
As long as it is supported by the system(?), you should be able to. > I'm giving my current 160GB drive to the wife for backups, and want > to get something larger for myself. USB drives seem to be much > cheaper than firewire once you get above 160GB. > > thanks, > > Rick Prefer Firewire for bootable external... data transfer is better using Firewire. The best of USB (USB 2.0) is a data transfer rate of 480 Mbps. Fw (Fw 400 & 800) transfer rates are 400 & 800 Mbps, respectively. Also, Fw drives typically have a data cache of 8 to 16 MB. It seems rare to find a USB drive with _any_ data cache at all, though a few are available with maybe 2 MB of data cache. Otherwise, make sure it is @ 7200 drive speed; portable units of both Fw and USB are usually @ 5400, so look for a 'desktop' unit. Regards, Russ Preston | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be August 22 at Pitt Academy, 6010 Preston Highway. | The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
