I believe the answer is Yes. Installing to an internal hard drive will always give better performance than any USB drive. Having said that, many users have great success running BIAB from a USB drive.

I would first explore and rule out other causes of not-optimal performance on your computer. First, download and run the free utility Geekbench and report your score. It should be at least 1500. [A newer computer may easily exceed four times that.] Next, download and run the free utility DPC Latency Checker. It should show all green, no red spikes. The website gives instructions. Common culprits include wireless networking and a drive that needs defragging.

USB 3.0 is really nice, but 2.0 should be fine. Some older computers may have some of the USB ports still using USB 1.0 so make sure you are not plugged into one of those. The best choice is always a port on the back of the computer. If you are running from a USB hub, make sure it's a powered hub.

Finally, and this may be overkill, the biggest improvement I saw in running any program was when I loaded it from a SSD drive.

BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.