dpresley,
"Will an external ssd drive help speed up clunky Bbox performance?"
It's a strange question, but lets try to decipher. Do you have a spinner hard drive as your main drive?

What year is your BIAB version?
The reason I ask is that, since 2024 (current) track generation was sped up several folds.

USB ports 3.2? 3.1? or something slower?

Bottom line, If you have one of the ports above and 2024 Ultra Pack which is shipped on a fast ssd drive, regardless of how old your computer is, you should see significant difference in track generation / re-generation speeds, even if you run RTs/Rds from external hard drive.