Using an external drive to boot?

Generally slower on external drive.
Wont make system faster but some things may be faster to load off external.
Need to install OX on the drive first
then select it as startup volume in system prefs
and restart.

I dont recommend putting the OS on the external
but I would put the lesser used apps on it and as backup, as iTunes storage it is really great.

 

1. Maybe, maybe not. The RPM of the external may be faster, but you might find the connection to the computer to become the limiting factor.
2. You can't boot from a drive that doesn't have an operating system (like Mac OS X) installed on it. Therefore, if you want to boot your Mac from that external drive, you must install Mac OS X on it.
3. The only thing you'll need to do is tell your Mac to boot from that drive using the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences in Mac OS X. No other preparations are needed (besides making sure the drive is properly formatted for Macintosh use before installing - otherwise Mac OS X will refuse to install).

 

You should be able to boot from the drive with no problems. But you will have to first install a copy of Panther or Tiger or whatever version you'll be using on the drive. Then just set your startup disk (in system preferences) to the external drive.

As far as performance goes .... I don't think that there will be much difference, but I've never really tested.

 

Yes - you don't need to install anything before you'll be able to use the drive for file storage.