How-To Geek Forums / Geek Stuff
external vs. internal hard drive
(26 posts)
Actual speeds on my Dell Inspiron read
copying from internal disk partition C to internal disk partition D = around 15 mbs
copying from internal disk partition D to internal disk partition C = 6-12 mbs
To and from internal drive (C or D partition) (External disk 1) = around 12 mbs
To and from internal drive (C or D partition) (External disk 2) = 15-19 mbs
These are all cheap IDE drives
So, as they say, go figure!
If you write from C: to D: you have a lot of arm movement because you are on the same physical disk. The slower speed from D: to C: is problably because the file(s) had a different structure (small versus large, more fragmentation). Writing from the internal disk to the external disk should be faster than the first 2 cases because of the better continuity of the arm movements. And since you are way below the maximum USB speed, the data channel is no bottleneck. Conclusion: Writing from one disk to another is faster than writing from one disk partition to another disk partition on the same disk - reason: arm movement.
Jack, it is just typical to run the programs from internal drives and use external ones for storage (pics, docs, video, backups etc). About the only time most people put a program on an external drive is if they need to be able to run it on multiple pc's but don't want to install it on the other pc. I run my poker programs from my external drive, that way when I'm out on business I can just bring that external drive along and play my games without having to install the programs on my employers laptop (I doubt that they would approve of that ;-)
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