Installing software on usb hard drive?

J

J Crew

New Member
i would like to install software on my external usb hard drive without it putting files on my enternal hard drives operating system. i do alot of video editing and would like to keep everything confined on one external drive... all video files and all the software. i am wondering if i install windows xp on the external drive, could i then install software on that drive? would any files and/or extensions be installed on my main enternal drive? would i be able to unplug this external drive and plug it into any usb capable computer and use the installed software? thanks for your time and any help you can provide.

- Jason
 
Running programs on an external thumbdrive is not recommended. Now if you had a second hard drive on your computer and installed it all there, that should be fine. Thumbdrives are great for data backup, but not to executed on.
 
The reason is because external HDDs run slower since instead of having a large bandwidth cord running between it and the motherboard, it only has a USB cord, this is much slower. I have tried doing what you did but it increased my video rendering by 1+ hours
 
It will be hard to install software on an external USB since it will write registry entries to your internal hard drive which has the OS on it. And it may not work properly on a differnt computer.
 
thanks for the advice and info everyone. well, if i decide to install a second hard drive, how can i select it to boot at startup? this way i can install an OS on this drive.

will this keep all installed software seperate from my first hard drive? will it only write registries to the 2nd hard drive? thanks again.

- Jason
 
your registry is kept wherever your installed OS is, so if your external HDD is D: and your OS drive is C: then registry values will be put on C: You would have to have an OS on your external HDD to have a completely isolated system on an external HDD but this would cause problems because windows doesn't like drastic hardware changes and thats exactly what would happen when switching your external HDD around to various PCs.
 
install it on the internal, and ask the program u installed to keep its files (eg. video, pics) on the external. that way u can install the prog on any computer, configure it to keep its files on that external, and switch back and forth between comps!
 
the registry files would still be on the installed computer unless installed to an OS on the external HDD. This is where the problem comes in since many programs wont run without their registry files.
 
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