Boot Lion from External SSD

[intelmac]

Today I booted Lion from an Intel SSD 320, 80GB external SSD. Wow, the speed is amazing! Mac Mini, i5, 8gb Ram. When I read about doing this I realized many people criticized booting an SSD from USB. Well, there are wrong. Super fast, now using internal 500GB drive as a backup.

 

[Satcomer]

Just with the SSD try to get another external (beside your backup) to move your iTunes Library using this guide: How to move an iTunes library to an external drive. It will help save a lot of space on your SSD.

 

[jbarley]

Today I booted Lion from an Intel SSD 320, 80GB external SSD. Super fast, now using internal 500GB drive as a backup.

You still see a multiple factor speed increase if you switched the drives, SSD mounted internal as boot drive and 500GB external for backups.
Put the SSD on the fastest bus and give it a chance to live up to it's potential.

 

[fryke]

While the SSD will be perfectly able to fully use the speed of USB 2.0, that speed is probably well below what the SSD actually can accomplish. So yeah: Put that SSD _in_ the Mac mini and use the hard drive externally, like jbarley said.