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I'm going to be getting a new work laptop with a regular HDD (I don't know the specs yet). The company is not providing SSDs, so I've considered purchasing an external SSD drive.

One note is that I can't reinstall the OS (Windows 7) but I can reinstall any of my applications.

Q1: Does it make sense to get an external SSD?
Q2: Will I get large increase in performance?

Giacomo1968
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dark fader
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    Do you plan to hook up the external hard drive via USB2, USB3, eSATA, or thunderbolt? – ChrisInEdmonton Jan 09 '14 at 18:01
  • If you want one that badly, I suggest asking your local IT dept if they would be willing to wait to install Windows on the laptop until after you have swapped out the internal drive with an SSD you bought. – David Jan 09 '14 at 20:18
  • I don't know what company policy says but you can physically clone whatever is on the hdd to an ssd without changing windows at all. Then connect the SSD internally and you will get all the benefits of an SSD. – cybernard Jan 10 '14 at 05:43
  • If the laptop has an mSATA slot, you could easily add an mSATA SSD drive in addition to the HDD. – paradroid Nov 28 '14 at 09:43

3 Answers3

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As much as this is more of an opinionated question, I don't think the price and the cumbersome attributes of the external drive make the slight performance benefit of programs to be worth it. Of course, it depends on the programs you will be running. For instance, if you're running SPSS and running a job with a large data set, you will be using more processing power than drive read/write speed. I feel like this would be the case with most of the programs you would be using.

The main advantage you will see would be program opening speed. That is when a program reads/writes to the drive most of the time.

For a good explanation, see this question: Is it possible that solid state drives (or any faster drive) will make common applications faster even if they are cached?

In short:

Q1: no, because:

Q2: not really.

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dr4g1116
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I think eSata would perform the same as any internal sata drive and would therefore provide an excellent benefit over a standard hard disk. especially if you have sata 3. The only difference between internal and external sata is the connector. sata 3 at 6gbps works great with an ssd. Move your swap file to the ssd and install your most accessed applications and files on it.

John Faulkner
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To make it simple:

Q1: No, External SSD will not help in working faster, load Windows faster and all the other SSD drive's benefits.

Q2: No.

Hope this helps.

Regards.

r0ca
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  • I believe this is untrue if hooked up via eSATA, at least. – ChrisInEdmonton Jan 09 '14 at 21:36
  • I think that even with that connection, it will not improve his work since the SSD is external. It would if the SSD would be the primary one where all apps sits and run (OS included) – r0ca Jan 09 '14 at 21:47