Windows 10: Running Windows 10 Pro On USB HDD?

Hmm you say you have a eSATA port, this is what I would use, very little speed loss with eSATA the hard drive speed will be the bottle neck same as it is internally.

 

I thought it wouldn't matter if I was using USB 3.0 HDD since the USB port on the laptop was USB 2.0?

 

For an HDD, true.

I was really referring to flash drives which is not really relevant in your case.

Older usb2 flash drives were often a lot slower than the USB2 port speed. Even many usb3 flash drives are slower than the usb2 port speed (rather pointless them being usb3). However some usb3 flash drives are much faster, and if you use one of them, it will at least run at maximum speed possible on usb2 drive (note at best you may get 30-35 MB/s where usb2 port is nominally 60 MB/s in theory. Point is not many usb2 flash drives even reach much more than 10-20 MB/s but any decent usb3 drive should reach 30-40 MB/s.

 

There is your answer. I wouldn't bother or waste the time on a USB 2.0 laptop, if you were using the USB ports.

 

Sorry, but I'm not sure what you mean?

Are you saying that the eSATA port will be just as fast as a hard drive that was connected to the laptop internally?

Please help me understand?

 

Real world benchmark tests show that eSATA and USB 3.0 provide basically the same performance from hard drives connected to them. So, if you have a computer with only USB 2.0 and eSATA - the eSATA port is going to be many times faster than USB 2.0. If you have a computer with USB 3.0 and eSATA, you could expect about the same performance from either one - provided that whatever you connect to the USB 3.0 port is also a USB 3.0 device.

 

Doesn't really matter if its a mechanical spinner drive though. *Wink It's going to be the bottleneck regardless of which interface you connect it too. A bit off topic anyway, IMHO. I think the original premise was, hard drive failed and I don't have another hard drive that will fit internally, will this work? If you have to go out and buy something to make this work, you may as well just buy the correct drive to mount internally.

 

one other difference eSATA is bootable straight up.