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Would it be too slow to run Ubuntu from an external HDD via eSATA or would I not tell the difference?

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Quote from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

[...] eSATA (e standing for external) provides a variant of SATA meant for external connectivity. It uses a more robust connector, longer shielded cables, and stricter (but backward-compatible) electrical standards. The protocol and logical signaling (link/transport layers and above) are identical to internal SATA.

In other words, you would not tell the difference because there is none.

One might argue that you could have a controller with SATA 3 Gbit/s capability providing eSATA connectivity and a controller with SATA 6 Gbit/s capability only providing internal connectivity and therefore have a difference in transfer speeds. However as you stated in your question, you want to connect a HDD, which currently do not exceed SATA 3 Gbit/s transfer speeds like SSDs.

In the long run eSATA will be phased out and replaced by USB 3.0 (currently 5 Gbit/s transfer speed with 10 Gbit/s already planned). Therefore my advice would be to consider using USB 3.0 instead of eSATA, since USB 3.0 enclosures are backwards compatible to USB 2.0 and therefore more versatile.

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  • For the sake of completeness we should mention the non-standard: eSATAp and eSATApd hybrid connectors which can be used as either eSATA or USB connectors (many of them work at USB 3.0 speeds) with the added advantage that they provide power-over eSATA / USB. Oct 21, 2013 at 19:00
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yeah it is nice idea, But it is always not possible with External hard drive because it do not hold the boot start-up paths boot entities for very time you connected to different systems. It is possible only when you use the external hard drive for one computer. And Finally it wouldn't be slow at all when u using Ubuntu from external hard drive by e-sata.

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    The default boot loader GRUB is setup to use UUIDs which do not change like device IDs (/dev/sda1). Therefore installing in MBR mode (UEFI would be a bit more difficult) to the external device will work quite well.
    – LiveWireBT
    May 3, 2013 at 20:50

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