Viability of running off a bootable external drive

[sunshadow]

So I'm upgrading hard drives and I was given the advice to use Carbon Copy Cloner, which creates a bootable clone of your machine. So I did that.

I've got two macs so I tested booting my newly created bootable drive in my other computer. And it seems to boot just fine, and web browsing works fine while using it.

How feasible would it be to work off of an external bootable drive? It seems pretty responsive but I also haven't tried to do any processor intensive tasks.

It's just an idea. It might be kind of nifty instead of carry a laptop w/ me somewhere when I know a friend or family member has a mac, that I just carry the bootable hard drive and plug it it and voila "my computer" is there. I guess the only thing I'd have to be careful of is anything that gets saved on the bootable drive won't be on my actual computer.

Thoughts?

 

[MCAsan]

So is this external bootable drive's enclosure going to support USB 2, FW 800, USB 3, or thunderbolt? Anything but thunderbolt or USB 3 would be very slow. What happens when they do not have USB 3 or thunderbolt?

Personally I would not allow any visitor to hookup their HD to my machine. I have a separate wifi for guests.....and then they are on their own. I would suggest that if having your computer with you is that important, get a MBA or MBP to replace the desktop. If all you really need is email access...use an iPhone or iPad.

 

[sunshadow]

Enclosure has USB3. Just an idea though.