Installing Applications on external FireWire drive - a good idea?

Hello,

I'm planing on using a MacBook Pro with 128GB SSD. The idea is to install only essential stuff and store other things on an external FireWire 800-enabled HDD.

How big is the general difference in acces/transmission times compared to an internal generic HDD? And is the performance sufficient to even run applications from that external drive, should I run out of space on the SSD?


Will I spot a significant difference if I'm for example editing videos where all the files and the workspace are on that external drive while only Adobe Premiere is installed on the SSD?

Firewire 800 is pretty snappy..it's probably no where near as fast as the SSD though..even an in-built HDD will be slower than SSD.

If you do install Adobe Premiere on the SSD and leave all the video and other materials on the external HD, your access to it (what's not already loaded into RAM) will be slower. There are, however, many variables that determine how much of a lag you'll perceive. If the files are not gargantuan then you probably won't notice much, but loading, re-loading or constantly loading lots of data from the external HD will probably be very noticeable..

Regards