Very slow FSX install in external drive

[SSI01]

I'm in the middle of installing - or attempting to install - FSX onto a drive external to my desktop. I've seen advice elsewhere stating this move as it turns out is not practical because there exists a funnel between the external drive and the processor in the desktop through which data from the external drive must pass before the processor can display it on the monitor. What I've seen indicates external drives are fine for storage but not for actually running FSX from. Am I interpreting this situation correctly?

I am asking this question because, as I've mentioned, the install so far has been extremely slow. It's taken about 10 minutes for the disk drive to read the disk enough to get the setup.exe to show on the monitor, which means I've not been able to direct the installation onto the targeted drive. I'm thinking part of this problem has to do with the drive reading the disk.

[Roger]

I would agree. The usb interface will be a bottleneck for running the sim from an external drive.

[Priller]

The difference is (theoretically)

USB 2.0: 43MB
SATA 3: 600MB

And even USB 3.0 won't save you.

Like you said in your post, external is good for storage (typically backups), but not for running programs on it.

Priller

[stansdds]

External drives are great storage devices, but they are horribly slow for actually running programs.

[wombat666]

If you really desperately want to run from an external drive the only way it will work (and not very well) is to copy from an existing installation.
That works well on FS2004 but it can get unhappy when you unplug the drive.
Better to install an additional internal HD, preferably an SSD, and dedicate it to FSX.
:encouragement: