External, portable hard drives

[mike_the_wino]

Any one running any BFC games off a portable HD? I need to get one for my music but my aging PC is sorely in need of HD space and was thinking an external could do both. Any downside to this plan?

[Schrullenhaft]

You can probably run CMSF off of an external hard drive. However the installation will not be "portable". CMSF will be licensed to the PC that it was installed and licensed on. There are registry settings and some other files that tie the license to the computer it is activated on (not permanently, but while it remains actively licensed).

You can move the external hard drive to another computer and license the game there too (if you have a free activation). But moving to one more computer would not work unless you unlicense one of the previous installations to free up an activation.

External hard drives can be slower then internal ones since the data needs to move over the USB bus (the most common type of external hard drive connection) which is slower than the IDE or SATA data connections. Firewire might be a little more faster than USB, while eSATA would probably be the fastest external hard drive connection, though not as fast as a normal SATA connection (though you would be hard pressed to tell the difference). External hard drives also tend to be a bit slower RPM-wise, 5400RPM vs. 7200RPM for most desktop internal hard drives. Not all externals are 5400RPM, but a number are (resulting in cooler drives).

[mike_the_wino]

Thanks, Schrullenhaft. Yeah, I was aware of the the single computer use thing (registry settings and all) but did not factor in the speed difference.