usb2 ext hard drive fast enough?

here are some general questions from an out of date hardware guy. The
questions are not xp specific but I know the people frequenting this group
will likely know the answers.

1) in general, are todays usb2 external hard drives fast enough to do more
than just store infrequently used data or backups?
A. can you install and run common office applications from them without lag
times?
B. could I use one as the storage location for outlook express or outlook
data without lag times when accessing the data stores?
C. Flat-file based databases like MS Access or Quickbooks data without lag
times?

2) how fast are these things compared to 'common desktop' internal drives?
I'm generalizing here, not taking into account things like write caches.
Just talking the actuall buses, or interconnects, here.
A. 7200 RPM EIDE (ATA-100, ATA-133, for example)?
B. 7200 RPM SATA?

any input is appreciated. I know these things are not new anymore but I have
not used one yet and may have a need for one soon. I want to know the
limitations, if any, compared to the common internal drives.

"djc" wrote:

here are some general questions from an out of date hardware guy. The
questions are not xp specific but I know the people frequenting this group
will likely know the answers.

1) in general, are todays usb2 external hard drives fast enough to do more
than just store infrequently used data or backups?

Depends on what exactly you need.

A. can you install and run common office applications from them without lag
times?

No, because these "common" apps are huge behemoths that can stress
even fast internal disks.
Thin, performance optimized apps can work off a USB drive quite well.
Keep in mind that USB is not only slower than normal storage interfaces,
but also creates higher load on the CPU.

B. could I use one as the storage location for outlook express or outlook
data without lag times when accessing the data stores?

Maybe. Depends how you define "lag times".

C. Flat-file based databases like MS Access or Quickbooks data without lag
times?

Same

2) how fast are these things compared to 'common desktop' internal drives?
I'm generalizing here, not taking into account things like write caches.
Just talking the actuall buses, or interconnects, here.
A. 7200 RPM EIDE (ATA-100, ATA-133, for example)?
B. 7200 RPM SATA?

any input is appreciated. I know these things are not new anymore but I have
not used one yet and may have a need for one soon. I want to know the
limitations, if any, compared to the common internal drives.

Get an external SATA?

--PA