Question about backing up programs from C to external drive

[Memnoch]

Originally posted by Callum: Well I believe flash drives are not recommended for things like that because they only have a limited life span. After a certain amount of read/write functions, they start to die, and running programs from them is far more intensive than accessing documents. Having said that, Vista has introduced HyperMemory (I think it's called) to use an external flash drive as extra RAM, so maybe I'm wrong, or the problem has been minimised in recent drives.

I'm not talking about a flash drive - this is a 7200rpm, 120GB external USB 2.0 hard drive. It's connected via a USB connection, but is a "proper" hard drive.

[PurpleXVI]

I haven't tried running anything off an external drive before, but I've got a few gigs free on my USB drive currently, I'll experiment with it some time tomorrow if anyone's interested in the results.

[SpiritWarrior]

It's not recommended. This isn't unexplored ground. The USB port speed would be slower. Especially in modern games. Think of it the same as paging file vs. actaul RAM. Keep old things like photos and media docs in there and run your games directly from your internal drive.

[Callum]

Originally posted by Memnoch: quote: Originally posted by Callum: Well I believe flash drives are not recommended for things like that because they only have a limited life span. After a certain amount of read/write functions, they start to die, and running programs from them is far more intensive than accessing documents. Having said that, Vista has introduced HyperMemory (I think it's called) to use an external flash drive as extra RAM, so maybe I'm wrong, or the problem has been minimised in recent drives.

I'm not talking about a flash drive - this is a 7200rpm, 120GB external USB 2.0 hard drive. It's connected via a USB connection, but is a "proper" hard drive. [/QUOTE]Oh sorry... not sure where I pulled flash from then. In that case, it'll work if you install it to G, but it'll be a lot slower when loading in particular. USB is nowhere near as fast as IDE or SATA.