External Hardrive Questions

I just bought my first External today, and i was wondering;
1. Does it damage the HDD if i leave it plugged in for long periods (i dont think it does, but i’m just checking)
2. Does the external HDD act like the c:/ drive or more like an mp3 or pen drive? in other words, if i were to install something, like a game, and set the External as my installation destination, would it work exactly the same as it would if i were to install it into the Local disk?
3. when i plug in devices into the usb, and turn my laptop on, it beeps once to let me know the computers on, beeps again with a different tone to let me know the device has been loaded.
When i plugged my external into the usb and turned my computer on, the different toned beep sounded before the computer beep.
Does that mean its starting the external first?
In other words, if i install linux onto my external, will it run linux first if i have it plugged in?
thats all for now i think.
Thanks,
Answer #1
1. no
2. yes
3. if boot from USB is available in the boot order you would change it there
Answer #2
yeh if you can change your MB to boot from USB then you could install an OS onto it and run from it
Answer #3
oh, ok.
Thanks for your help guys
Regards
Answer #4
2. Does the external HDD act like the c:/ drive or more like an mp3 or pen drive? in other words, if i were to install something, like a game, and set the External as my installation destination, would it work exactly the same as it would if i were to install it into the Local disk?

Be wary of installing large progs as load times over a USB cable can be way way longer than over IDE or SATA.
Answer #5
I thought so, but it seems to install quite fast.
Answer #6
yeh if you can change your MB to boot from USB then you could install an OS onto it and run from it
wow I never knew that…time to test those OS’s before I use it on my new build.
Answer #7
Yea one thing is I would not run a permenant OS from an external drive, there is a significant speed difference through USB. Also It is best to download items to an internal drive and then transfer them over to the USB drive as there is a download delay when downloading directly to a usb drive. I notice a pretty good speed difference when I am downloading directly to my external that I do not have when downloading to my main drive.
Answer #8
I notice a pretty good speed difference
with USB2 that should not be the case, you may have a problem
there may be a 10-15% diff at most
Answer #9
Vista can’t even install on an USB drive, right? Must be for a reason.
Answer #10
I notice a pretty good speed difference
with USB2 that should not be the case, you may have a problem
there may be a 10-15% diff at most
there is a significant drop between external hard drive via usb interface speeds and that of your Sata 1.5gb/3.0gb speeds.
then take into account random read/writes (not just sequential writes), then take into account thrashing as implemeted by the OS.
better not to run an os from an external, use it to back up or as an extension of your internal HDD to be used when needed.