Boot Mac OSX from External Hard Drive

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Hi
I am going to be editing an HD Video soon, and I need a fast Firewire 800 Hard Drive. I went to Best Buy today just to look, and I talked to a non commission Seagate Salesperson who was actually cool with me buying it online. He showed me their current offerings, and I fell in love with their GoFelx Pro Portable Hard Drive. Next year, I'm going to have a mac laptop issued to me by my school, and it would be cool to be booting the same thing and stuff as my IMac.

Heres an idea: I Install Mac OSX Snow Leopard on the GoFlex Pro. Every time I use my IMac or Macbook, I press the option key upon starting it up, and select the GoPro. On this drive, I have my Operating System, and my beloved Final Cut that they probably would not let me install. I would plug it in to the computers using the Firewire 800 on my IMac, and the Firewire 400 on their ancient Macbooks. Would this idea work?

Thanks!
 
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Any ideas?
BTW, would this be faster or slower then my internal?
 

chscag

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Whenever you boot a Mac from an external hard drive be it USB, FW400, or FW800, it's going to be way slower than using the internal hard drive.

Will it work as you ask? Yes. Is it practical? No.
 
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Would FW800 be decent for HD Video though?
I was always told it would be faster to use an external then internal for 1080p video.
 

chscag

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Not true. Video (1080p) will smoother and faster when run from the internal hard drive. Remember, you're comparing the internal bus speed with an external bus speed which is miles slower. Even FW800....

Now maybe the new "Thunderbolt" technology used in the current line of MBP machines will change all that. However, right now we don't have any external devices which can use it. :)
 
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To give an example of this speed drop, SuperDuper will back up a Mac Pro hard drive to an external via FW800 at a speed of about 25MB/s, and take some eleven minutes. With a second hard drive in the machine connecting at SATA II, runs at over 80MB/s and takes less than three minutes.

Internal drives always run faster than external regardless of how connected.
 
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Ok, because I'm working with HD Video, would my best upgrade be a new internal hard drive? Like the new Seagate Hybrid type? Thanks! Will
 

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