Using USB external disk as system disk for XPs?

Hello,
I am running out of space on my Mac (notebook...) disk and Parallels virtual disks are large chunk which is in my way. I wonder, if it is possible to:

1. Run with Parallels folders on USB disk. How much speed issue that will be and will it even run? What will the virtual memory files and other PD files do in this configuration?

2. Use NTFS or Fat32 formated USB disk directly as system disk for Windows in Parallels VM. Like when running with Bootcamp, but with the partition on USB disk. That would be ideal - native read/write to the disk, disk readable by other Win machines if necessary and all would be nicely out of my main Mac drive... I am not sure how much speed hit there would be, though.

But anyway - is any of these options ... possible, suggested, likely to work?

Thanks

jan

 

1. Yes - just copy VM folder there
2. We are working to bring it in next version