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I am having two hard drive in my pc. One is 160GB and the other one is 500GB. I am using the second one for storing files. There are more than 200GB of videos in it. I had installed Windows 8 on the first drive. But it is very slow. I had checked the hardware requirements before installing that looks fine. I am having 2GB ram and Core 2 Duo cpu. But still it is very slow. I am also having a 16GB USB 3.0 pen drive. Does installing windows on that will work faster.
It will work faster. But you have to let the drive connected to your system 24x7. If you remove your system will fail to boot. Your board must have the feature to boot from pen drive. I am using a SSD which has flash chips similar like a pen drive. And Windows on that works really fast compare to regular drive. You can install and test once. That will help you to get a proper idea about the speed.
I think if you add more ram sticks then you don't have to install windows in a pen drive. You have only 2GB of ram. Buy one more stick of 2GB and add it. 4GB will boost the performance. I got this issue on Windows 7 where I was only using 2GB ram before. I had installed Photoshop and it was quiet slow. I added a 2GB ram later on and the problem is resolved. The system is working fast and there is no performance problem.
You are facing slow performance issue on a newly formatted system. That means you are having a slow drive. It is correct that by installing Windows on usb 3.0 you will surely get faster output, but that is a temporary solution. 16GB is very less space. In that around 8 to 10GB will be occupied by Windows and you won't be able to install any programs on it. You might get disk full or low page file error
I will use the different partition to install programs. The first 160GB drive. There are two partitions of 80GB on that. I will use the first one as default location to add all programs. And I hope that will make the system work faster. I had not yet tested but willing to go ahead. I just want to confirm that this will work or else why to waste time on this. I had seen my friend using Ubuntu on a pen drive. That is why I got this idea.
By changing the program installation location will not help much. Still those program will take long time to start if you the drive is already slow. It is necessary that you must go ahead with a new drive. Today you can buy them at cheaper rate. Go for 7000rpm drive. They will be bit costly but will provide you good performance output. And along with that buy one ram also. A 2GB ram is enough for usage.
Before buying anything it is fair to check the drive health status. You can do that by running various hard drive testing software. There is one more tool that can improve your drive performance. You can use Ultimate Defrag. This software is fast and easy to use. It can improve the drive output by organizing the data in proper way. Just test this tool first. If still it is slow then I also think you must buy a new drive.
If there is a hardware problem then you cannot do anything. Your system will still remain slower. You can try changing the sata cables. This will speed up the drive performance. You can also try changing the ports. If drive testing software does not help you much then you can stick with my solution. But if nothing helps and your system still slow then I think that your system hardware is not strong enough to run Windows 8.