Running programs from a USB 2.0 Drive

[Randomthom]

Does anyone have any experience of running programs from a USB 2.0 external hdd? I'm using a frightening amount of space up on my laptop's 500Gb HDD and might need to start spilling over onto my USB drive but I'm reluctant to do so for speed reasons. I play games too but I expect that would be pushing the USB bus a bit too hard to work with any fluidity.

Does anyone have any warnings or experiences doing this? So far I've just used it for file storage.

Thanks!

 

[Pete]

i've never tried to install a program onto an external drive, i guess in theory it is possible but it doesn't strike me as a good idea.

speed would be a mojor factor as well.

 

[pengipete]

Never tried it and seriously doubt it would be a workable option. Aside from transfer rates, you'll have the problem of Windows stuggling with installed apps not being found - particularly any that run background services or start-up routines. Windows can sulk when you install apps on a different partition - a separate, removable drive may be too much. You could use it for stand-alone apps but they are few and far between - either small freeware apps or hacked (illegal, unstable and risky) copies of larger apps.

I'd stick with using external drives for data.

I have to say - 500GB is a pretty decent size for a laptop drive and whilst not really suited to storing massive amounts of large data files (HD Video, whole DVD iso's etc) it's way above the average size of most desktop users' system partition . Is there no way to free up some space?

 

[Randomthom]

Steam directory says no...

I've cleared out some of my less-played steam games, I've got about 80Gb headroom which is enough that I know I won't get crashes because of it but not enough to rest easy on it...

I miss the days of my desktop, 1.75TB storage ftw...

Hopefully moving house & moving back to my desktop in the summer!

 

[pengipete]

You could free-up a chunk of space by ditching hibernation, deleting hotfix backups, restricting System Restore, limiting the pagefile and so on - you may be able to recover ~20GB that way. Any personal files - music, photos etc can obviously go onto external storage - depends how much data you have as to whether that's worth bothering about. There's also information floating around the net on how to reduce Windows' footprint with a "lite" installation but it's not without it's risks and may not be worth it for a few GB saved.

If you've got a way to make a complete, safe backup then you could try running at least some of your apps from the external drive - just to see. Otherwise, it's not going to be easy or cheap - 2.5" drives cost a fortune per gig and anything above 750GB gets you into silly money.