base 13" air (8GB) some questions

[sanctified89]

Hey guys, so I've been flip-flopping back and forth between a base 13" MBA w/8GB of ram and a base 15" MBP. After heavily browsing/posting in these forums and watching some youtube videos, I think I've finally settled on the MBA with upgraded ram. I realized that I wouldn't need all the "oomph" that the pro provides.

After looking at the costs of purchasing an aftermarket SSD, optibay, and ram, the price differential is even greater between the MBA and MBP. With that being said, I'd like to purchase an external USB drive for more storage. I have a lot of music and games that I know wouldn't fit on the internal SSD. Down the line, I'll probably upgrade the SSD but right now, an external solution would suit me best.

Just a couple questions, is it possible to run windows 7 off an external drive? I know USB 3 definitely has lower bandwidth when compared to the read/write speeds of the internal drive. But if I stored some programs on the external would they run noticeably slower in comparison?

 

[Bauer24]

You can run Windows from the external, that shouldn't be an issue.

To clarify, do you mean you want to run windows apps from the external while it is booted/running from the external drive?

Or do you mean you want to boot from the internal and have OS X apps on the external and run them?

 

[sanctified89]

Ideally I'd like to be able to boot/run windows from an external in order to save as much space as possible on the internal solid state. From what I've gathered, boot camp doesn't seem to allow installing windows to an external. Otherwise, I'll just make a small boot camp partition and then install programs to the external.

 

[paulrbeers]

Ideally I'd like to be able to boot/run windows from an external in order to save as much space as possible on the internal solid state. From what I've gathered, boot camp doesn't seem to allow installing windows to an external. Otherwise, I'll just make a small boot camp partition and then install programs to the external.

What do you plan to use boot camp for? I would consider going the Vmware Fusion or Parallels route if at all possible then you can put your VM anywhere. Just my .02 worth.

 

[sanctified89]

I'd like to be able to run some games and emulators through bootcamp. I know virtualization software (while good for many things) is not so adept at running intensive 3D tasks.