external boot, external Logic install, or external contents install?

[copland_audio]

Greetings - I'm getting my budget rig, and have a setup question. My Hardware is a 2.53 ghz Mac Mini (late 2009), a 1TB Mercury Elite Pro 7200rpm external FW 800, and a Presonus Firestudio Mobile. This rig will be relatively stationary, so I'm exploring my options re: external booting. I hear the internal 5400rpm drives on the Mini's are rather slow, so I'm wondering what the best performance Logic install would be with my hardware. I'm thinking of three possible options (and other options are certainly welcome):
1. Setup the external drive as the boot drive with Carbon Copy Cloner, and install and record everything to it. (If this is the best speed option, what are the correct partition settings? - OS on one partition, rest on another?)
2. Run the OS as installed, install all Logic, program and contents, and record to the external...is this even possible?
3. Run the OS as installed, install Logic to internal 5400rpm drive, and install virtual instruments, loops and such to the external.

Basically, would there be a performance boost running everything from the external FW drive? If so, I'd love to get anyone's experiences...

Thanks!

 

[David51]

Hi, I have an old[2007] iMac and it came with a 250GB HD. This became rapidly full enough to cause small blips so I CCC cloned it to an external WD 7200 rps 1TB My Book Studio and daisy chained another 1TB WD to it for time Machine all FW800, also a FW La Cie 320GB for the audio samples and everything seems to be working , not using any fx and such[I hate the sound of over compressed music in any genre] I have run several instances of EXS and Wallender Instruments, plus a few Play choir samples and haven't heard or seen this machine complain-it may suffer like me from bad taste in music but it's doing OK so far. Good luck, I hope the real pros won't pass you by because of this post-mods-if you think so remove this or put it anywhere you want.