2) Speed USB stick, USB HDD, HDD and SSD

Diskspeed comparision:

Comparision of the my disk speeds measured with Crystal Marks (http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html)

Measurement setting: 1 test run with 100 MB data

USB stick 8 GB

external USB disk 1,5 GB

old HDD

new SSD

Seq matters for handling large amounts of data (see explenation below)

4K matters for fast boot and multitasking (see explenation below)

Disk specs:
- external USB disk: Western Digital Mybook 1,5 TB
- internal HDD disk: Western Digital 500 GB (5400 RPM)
- internal SSD disk:  Samsung 840 EVO 120 GB

Some nice articles about diskspeed and optimizing windows configuration for the SSD disk:
http://www.buildcomputers.net/hard-drive-benchmark.html

Explenation Seq and 4K:

Sequential read/write - measures the speed of your hard drive when it comes to the transfer of large files (e.g. installing programs, copying videos, programs, photo albums or music libraries from one hard drive to another). High sequential read speeds will also shorten the loading time for large programs such as modern computer games and video editing software.

4K random read/write - measures how fast your hard drive is able to access small files that are randomly scattered across it. A hard drive with higher 4K numbers will able to multi-task better, so your operating system will be more responsive and you can run more background programs (e.g. virus shield, firewall, torrents, instant messengers etc) without any major slowdowns.