External drives: what are they?

[diane in seattle]

I've read a number of threads here about external drives & whether or not
they're fixed hard drives or something else. However, I haven't been able to
understand the answers.

My hard drive is full of software. I put all my data on one of two external
drives. One is an Iomega, 500gb. The other is a Seagate, 160gb. I had a
horrible problem with the Iomega crashing my computer's hard drive, so I've
avoided using it, but I have just put it back in service.

The thing I want to know is: can I install programs (not Windows XP) from an
external drive & will they run from there? One of the people who answered
recommended Application Mover, which I have downloaded. It not only moves the
apps, but it fixes the registry so it matches the path.

I'm going to give it a whirl, but I'd like to hear some opinions here, &
also, a fundamental point--are my external hard drives considered fixed
drives? Or are they just some kind of storage devices?

Thanks for your replies.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Your hard drives are fixed-disk drives. The best results are when your
programs are installed on the C: drive on its one controller and data is
stored on one or more drives on different controllers. The reason is that
data can be read/written simultaneously with program and system code
(asynchroneous r/w). When programs and data share the same controller one
must wait on the other.

It is not advantageous to install programs on an external usb drive because
of the slow tranfer rate (480kbs) but an external eSATA drive (3gbs) would
not suffer the same slower transfer rate since it would be the same as an
internal SATA drive.

 

[Lil' Dave]

An external enclosure may contain a hard drive. Such an enclosure may be
USB, Firewire, or eSATA interface.

A physical hard drive is fixed if the drive letter(s) cannot change by
simple addition or removal of other interface devices such as another
external enclosure with a hard drive or perhaps a thumb/flash drive. By
virtue of this possibility, many people use these for storage only. Keeping
their applications local, and backing up their PCs via clone or imaging to
the external enclosure with a physical hard drive.

The safest place to keep 3rd party applications is at its default location
noted at installation.

Iomega has had a bad reputation with their hardware in the past being flaky.
Sometimes needing a software driver that needs constant updates from Iomega
to keep fixing consumer noted problems.