Any severe side effects of installing programs to a removable drive?
11 replies, posted
I have a USB drive that acts as secondary storage for this small as fuck Surface. I assume that installing programs to it then removing the drive later might cause a registry error or something, but is there any system-breaking side effects or any convincing reason that makes it enough to never do this?
I won't attempt running the programs on other computers.
[QUOTE=Kiwi;52298392]Not REALLY.
Just make sure it doesn't lose it's drive letter.[/QUOTE]
This, and just making sure you actually have it connected when you go to use the programs on the removable drive. I can't tell you how many times I've had to troubleshoot someone's computer just because they couldn't get something working, and it was all because they didn't have the drive connected to the rest of the system in the first place.
Also many externals aren't built as much for constant access, so it may fail sooner and will likely be slower. Many WD Externals are built with greens for example which aren't meant for constant access at all.
Also be aware that even with USB3, access speeds will still be a little slower than a normal (SATA) connection. It's still super easy to saturate the USB3 bus, from what I've experienced anyway. If you're not expecting to play major games off it, things should be fine.
I've also had times (Though this might've been the enclosure I've used) where after a long period of sustained I/O the drive will momentarily disconnect and reconnect.
Depends on the game. GTA V and Forza Horizon 3 for example suffer a [B]lot[/B] from slow storage.
And yeah, it does generally depend on the enclosure. I have 3 (one USB 2.0 WD enclosure, one USB 3.0 Seagate that once had one of the dreaded 3TB drives that I got from a coworker, and a USB2/eSATA 2-port one) and they seem all like to disconnect at random... Maybe I just have bad luck.
I don't think it's the USB port on my Seagate one, it's in good shape and it won't disconnect when it moves or anything.
Maybe it's just the drives I'm using.
V:v:V
Kind of overdue for new drives all around anyway.
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