Internal vs. External HD speeds

[DaUlf]

I'm not sure of how the numbers/bus speeds would work in this situation, so I'm just going to ask away.

How would the speed of a good 7200rpm drive on FW800 compare to one of the internal 4200rpm drives on the new PBs? Would it be faster for overall performance to install the system on the external drive than to use the internal one? I realize it'd be a pain, and I'm not planning on doing it, but I'm curious how it'd work.

Any ideas?

[Rower_CPU]

An faster external will have much better performance than a slow internal. Either FW400 or 800 will be fine for an external HD.

[shadowfax]

i concur; you want to get the fastest-spinning drive you can, regardless of the format (FW, FW2, ATA-5, ATA-100). you can't saturate the bandwidth on any of them with even a 7200 rpm drive, so the interface format is irrelevant unless you are after one that will go internal. if speed is the name of your game, you need 7200 rpms.