Loading a programme onto a portable hard drive

[wilstan22]

Because my hard drive is very full, I would like to load any further programmes onto my portable hard drive.Can someone please instruct me how I can do this? My very grateful thanks for any help.

[homedeeth]

i believe when you want to install a program onto your comp, you will be asked on which drive you want it. Therefore instruct the install wizard to stick it on your portable hard drive. Don't forget, everytime you want to run your new prog, you'll need your portable drive plugged in

[rojash]

You'd be better off moving your data to your removable drive. Installing applications to a drive that may or may not be available could could cause all sorts of problems. Also, even though applications may allow you to install them to a drive other than C, they often still add shared files, dlls, registry entries, ini files, etc to the C drive.

[VHG]

Like rojash I would say it is NOT a good idea to put programs on an external drive. Always put programs on a fixed drive, preferably C where Windows is.

Move personal files to youir external drive.

And if your C drive is nearly fuill then move stuff of it, like personal files. Windows will not work very well if there is no space on the drive as it needs to constantly create temporary files.

[wildwood]

Plug your device in and wait for Windows to install the driver for it. Then double click 'My Computer" and select the external drive usually visible under removable storage. Load your programs onto the ext drive and delete them from the main drive. When you want to install one of your programs, I find it easier to copy it to the main drive (desktop) and install it from there. Then delete the program after it is installed.

Mind that some small utility programs do not install into the registry when used, these need to be kept on the main drive with a shortcut to where they're strored..

[beso]

Most programs are relatively small compared to the data they work with anyway so there is very little to gain by installing them on an external drive.

Loading programs on an external drive is a bad idea. Drive letters can change depending on the order that external drives connect causing a mismatch between the registry records for the program and the program files.

Access to external drives is also much slower than internal drives. Simply buy another internal drive for the computer. Excepting laptops most computers can accommodate between two and four drives internally.

Installation is very simple.

BTW I think wildwood has been on the turps as that advice makes no sense at all.

[wilstan22]

Thank you all for your help and advice

[wildwood]

Beso (and others) you need to note the difference between loading and installing.

[beso]

No matter how you interpret the meaning of "load", wildwood's post is nonsense.