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Running programs from an external hard drive: good or bad idea?

April 26, 2017bad external hard drive good IDEA Programs running

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Running programs from an external hard drive: good or bad idea?

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They probably don’t want you to install programs on an external drive because if you do, you can duplicate the drive, and then use the programs on another computer, without re-purchasing them. It’s basically a simple DRM system. There is no technical reason why a program couldn’t be installed on a removable drive, although if you removed it while the program was running it could cause problems. Although the program itself will be loaded into memory (memory which will probably be swapped back out to the main hard drive at some point in a virtual memory system) a program may need to go back and grab some files stored in it’s primary folder. If those are on a hard drive which has been removed, it could cause unexpected behavior. But if you’re sure the drive will remain connected, there is no technical reason (other then DRM) why a program can’t be run from an external drive.