I have a Western Digital My Passport Essential 320GB external hard drive (product page here). I haven't done anything to this hard drive except re-format it to use the NTFS file system (it came as a FAT32) and I need to know if I can install programs onto the hard drive and run them as usual. I've heard that running programs off a flash drive is a good way to destroy it (I don't know if this is true and I forget where I heard it from :-# ) but I would imagine an external hard drive is different. I'm not sure though and I sure don't want to mess it up! So I'm just asking for confirmation of doing this is OK for the hard drive.

 

 

 

Also I assume that if I install programs to my external hard drive, I have to use the same USB port each time I plug it into the computer in order for the programs to work. Am I right? Am I?!

I used a removable hard drive with photoshop installed on it for 3 months when I did an internship last summer. The USB port you use shouldn't matter. It may be slower than an internal though if you're running more intensive programs like games.

I'm gonna keep games on my Internal HD and put programs I rarely use on the External HD. So I'll be fine you say? 8-)

Yeah, you're fine. It won't hurt the drive at all, and the speed won't be impacted much.

I've played various games of USB2.0 external harddrives and there is a little performance drop and the loading times are longer due to the slower data transfer rate.

Flash drives all have a x number of possible read/writes before they don't work. Installing programs and running them off flash drives you reduce the life of the drive much quicker then you normally would.

 

As for installing programs on a external harddrive, it should be ok, but the loading times will be greater then if you had installed them on a internal harddrive (due to the bottleneck of the USB connection).

 

O it should be noted without the application is designed to be portable you will not be able to run the programs from the external harddrive on any PC which you did not install the program on. Since most programs will write a registry keys when installed, meaning the program will not run correctly without them (ie on any PC which you've not installed them/it on).

Flash drives all have a x number of possible read/writes before they don't work. Installing programs and running them off flash drives you reduce the life of the drive much quicker then you normally would.

 

As for installing programs on a external harddrive, it should be ok, but the loading times will be greater then if you had installed them on a internal harddrive (due to the bottleneck of the USB connection).

 

O it should be noted without the application is designed to be portable you will not be able to run the programs from the external harddrive on any PC which you did not install the program on. Since most programs will write a registry keys when installed, meaning the program will not run correctly without them (ie on any PC which you've not installed them/it on).

 

 

 

That shouldn't be a problem, I'm not gonna take this thing around to other computers unless I need to transfers pictures and what not. The only other computers I use are the ones at my college, and they already have every program I could possibly need and they don't take kindly to me trying to play games on them! (unless I were in the Game Design program, which I'm not :lol: )