External hard drives for programmes.

[Night Train]

A friend of mine emailed to ask if it is possible to install an educational software package onto an external hard drive. I don't know so I thought I would ask here.

Her daughter has learning difficulties and the software would help her education but the package is a bit on the big side for installing on her ageing laptop. She wanted to know if it is possible to install it on the external hard drive and then run it from there on an 'as needed' basis to save it filling up the drive on the laptop. She still needs to use the laptop for her work so need space on it work effectively.

If it is possible, are there any problems or setting up to take into account?

Thank you.

 

[derall]

Depends whether the programme writes settings to the Windows registry or if it can be set to write settings to a local file (usually a .ini files in the local folder). If it came with an installer package then it probably (but not definitely) writes to the registry. However if it came in a zip file and you merely unpacked the file to a given location then it probably will run as a portable.

Have a look on Portable Apps - all these programmes can be installed on and run from a USB stick. You might find something in there that could be used as an alternative if the required package can't be used.

 

[Night Train]

Thank you, I will pass that on to her and see what she finds.

Cheers,
NT

 

[Mr Pig]

I don't know how to do it but I know it's possible, my son does these things all the time. He likes to mess around with different operating systems, types of programs and runs off different drives etc. He runs stuff off flash cards too.

 

[Sh4rkyBloke]

Should be able to - when the installer starts it usually gives you the option of where to install things... assuming that the external HDD keeps the same drive letter it *shouldn't* have too many issues running it from there.

No guarantees though - only way to know is to try it.

 

[Ivan Ardon]

If it's an old laptop it may only have USB 1.1 for the external HDD. It may be too slow to be usable.

 

[Night Train]

She's given up trying to understand what to do and just installed it after moving all her work files onto the external drive.