[gentoo-user] USB external hard drives

[james]

Hello,

I have a windows pro 10, bargain HP laptop, with a 1 T mechanical
internal drive. New. I'd like to make the system dual boot off of
an external (USB3) SSD, that is exclusive for Gentoo. I have about
500M of person and /usr/local files on other gentoo systems that I'd
like to DD over to the new drive.

1. I'm not sure what file system to use. I' like to use btrfs, but
I'd need some sort of guide to set that up.

OR

2. If I used ext-4 what should the formatting and partition table look
like?  Ideally, I'd like to put the 'gentoo on a partition to the native
hard drive. and be able to put /usr/local and /projects only on the
the new SSD external only, so I can move those mount point partitions
to various gentoo systems.


Perhaps I'll get (2) external SSDs and put gentoo on one, just for the
HP laptop and the second one set up just for /usr/local and /projects.


I'm just thinking out loud and ideas or discussions are welcome. I'm not
the sharpest tack, when in comes to windows pro 10..... or complex file
system setups.

All my systems are AMD64, the new laptop is Rizen 5 2500-U


James