external hard drive

installing programs

from WinCustomize Forums
Hellow everyone!

I'm planning to by myself an external hard drive. But I have a serious questions about external hard drives.
I'd like to put some programs on that external hard disk. But my questions is, is it possible to put software on an external hard drive?
And my main question is can I just take my hard disk with my to another computer, plug in and work with the program?
For example I install dreamweaver on the external hard drive and I did this by using my father's pc. Will the program function from the hard drive on my pc too ?

I'd really like a good explanation because, this is the only reason why I'm considering to buy an external hard drive.
Thank you very much
4,162 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top

You 'can' get that to work...by installing it on both machines...to that same drive...so each machine recognises it in the same location...and sets its registry to suit....

 

Reply #2 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Yes to what Jafo said, with a few additions.
Make sure if you are using WindowsXP to go to the Admin Tools and the Drive Utilities and make sure to actually set the drive letter on that drive. If you do not then XP will (not always but sometime) adjust the drive letter to the configuration of the machine. in this drives that a physically in the machine get prefference to the first drive letter, and then externals, and in this there is also a hierachial, system... IDE Order, Bus Order, Device Type etc... The best thing that I have found is to set the Drive Letter to Z, that way it is totally unmistakable and far enough down the chain of Drives to not interfere with other Drives as they are added to the system. This is important because if a running program is installed to a removable device, the shortcuts involved to start the program will be 'OFF' if the drive letter gets changed arbitrarily.




I have three external Drive USB and Firewire, as well as External DVD-RW. I only buy external Devices now. It is alot easier to take Data from system to system. Also make sure that your machine supports USB 2.0 (real 2.0 not the fake 2.0 that is acually 1.1 in disguise). If your machine does not have USB 2.0 then add a pci card and make it USB 2.0 or add firewire, and get a dual USB Firewire External. I say this because using an External drive through USB 1.0 or 1.1 is capped at throughput level of Max 12 mbps, this is very... very slow. It might not seems so on small files, but it really is. Couple this with a slow spinning hard drive and it becomes unbearably slow. USB 2.0 comes in @ 480 mbps (I think it was) and makes large file transffers bearable.
TouchTasks - Access tasks with ease on Windows touchscreens.
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
As hinted above, the trouble with a lot of apps is that they store settings in the registry. So if you take DreamWeaver to your father on your external drive, it might or might not work if it wasn't installed there previously.

Then again, external drives are very usefull, so it's worth a shot.

Bytheway, I have a bias towards external drive housing with a plain old, regular drive in there instead of one of those prepackaged external drives. Mainly because of the difference in price.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
External drives are best used for storing files. I have to agree with the difficulty of running apps from them.

And definately make sure its TRUE USB 2.0. There are a lot of external drives out there with the 1.1 setup that profess to be 2.0 drives.
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
All but one of my Drives are the (self assemble) types. I usually run out to CompUSA and grab a USB Enclosure and then thrown in whatever I need. The additional nice thing about that is, if a drive dies, or something, you can throw another type of device into the case. Also if a Drive dies in a self contained unit, usually the firmware of the unit will not support another device type. (been there / Done that) There is even a really cool little unit that doesn't even require a case, it just plugs into the Cable housing and power socket of any IDE Drive, and the USB Cable goes in the other end. This is handy if you have alot of older, smaller drives laying around. You can put them to use individually and not go to the expense of buying the (FULL) enclosure for something that is only say 4 to 20 GB. I even purchased a few 2.5 inch drive enclosures off of ebay. I had several Laptop HDs' laying around...(owing to old upgrades) and put them to use that way. The 2.5 enclosures are really cool and fit in your pocket, being barely bigger than the 2.5 inch drive itself, and draws enough power to not need an additional power lead.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hellow everyone !

I'ld like to thank all of you, for your very detailed explanation.
In order off appearance i would like to thank Admin Jafo,CygnusXII,craeonics,Citizen thatoneguyinslc.

I'm very pleased with your comments!

Sem,