external eSATA 300 hard drive - speed question

[Tomaz]

Hallo

I'm thinking about using an eSATA connection to connect an external hard drive to my Macbook Pro. The idea is to install FSX on that drive an play it through Bootcamp. Can anyone of you hardware pros tell me, if a game played off an external harddrive connected through eSATA II 300 is likely to be comparable (speedwise) to a game played off an internal hard drive ? Or is the eSATA connection a bottleneck here?

Thanks
Cheers
Tom

 

[Hellhammer]

Your Mac does not have eSATA port or have you modified something? eSATA is as fast as internal SATA, both are 3Gb/s (SATA II). However, a single mechanical HD cannot take advantage of the extra bandwidth so even SATA I is just fine. FireWire or even USB is just fine for games, the loading times will just be longer but the actual gaming performance should not be affected

 

[Tomaz]

express card adapter...

 

[Hellhammer]

express card adapter...

If that's the case, go ahead. As I said, eSATA is as fast as internal SATA so there shouldn't be difference in speed, it depends on the drive you're using though (likely 3.5" 7200rpm external i.e. faster than your internal)

 

[Tomaz]

great, thanks