Hard Drives: are they for editing programs too?

I searched about 4 -5 threads but didn't see an answer to this.

Are the external HD's just for pictures/documents/etc​. or do you also load photo/video/etc. editing software on them.

One person said save my software on the Ex -HD so I can work from there to make the computer faster, one person said only store photos or whatever on there and keep the sofware on In-HD.

I went ahead and purchased a Seagate 250 since my computer is slowing down, and want to make sure I'm using it correctly.

TIA
Cassandra

Anything attached directly to your computers' IDE/SATA/SCSI port will be the quickest. Plus having your software on your boot drive will gain a few more MS in the process. I say keep storage on external drives.

Now, at least back in the day Photoshop liked a scratch disc that was physically different than your boot drive (master/slave drive scenario for example).

I utilize external drives and even a network device - but I keep storage on them and active images (ones I'm editing) are not only on my external storage, but on a drive in the PC as well for quicker access.

I have two drives in my tower and two externals. I partitioned both internal drives and keep C:/ drive just for Windows. All my programs are on E:/ drive. It does run faster, but I do have 4Gb of RAM too, so it's all fast.

I use the externals for storage and keep my C:/ drive backup on there too.

software one internal HD, storage on external. trying to run your program through usb2.0 or firewire400 (dont know the performance of 800) is not one of the best ideas performancewise.

you can always keep your main harddrive running fast and in tip top shape by defragmenting and cleaning out unnecessary junk with programs like window washer. in my experience, computers themselves dont slow down, its us who use them that slow them down through no maintainence. I can get the most advanced overclocked, water cooled 4ghz pc with 8gb of ram and the fastest sata hard drives laced up with RAID 0 and still after a couple years the comp will slow down if i dont keep it clean.

but of course, at home my comp is only 20gb internally, and when memory falls below 3gb, it does indeed slow down when using photoshop...noticebly when im done with my edits and saving my picture.

One general rule is to never have data and programs running on the same drive.

Cassie wrote in post #4191287
I searched about 4 -5 threads but didn't see an answer to this.

Are the external HD's just for pictures/documents/etc​. or do you also load photo/video/etc. editing software on them.

One person said save my software on the Ex -HD so I can work from there to make the computer faster, one person said only store photos or whatever on there and keep the sofware on In-HD.

I went ahead and purchased a Seagate 250 since my computer is slowing down, and want to make sure I'm using it correctly.

TIA
Cassandra

If your concerned about losing software programmes and you don't have the disks, there are software programmes that will allow you to copy the entire contents of your computer onto an external backup drive. I just keep mine for storage, photos, docs etc. I use a 250Gb Formac external drive.


Reaperman

The problem with putting programs on removable drives is that while the program moves when you put the drive on a new machine, the registry entries do not so the program won't work nor will the original computer.

All beginner coders write software that's just 1 executable file with no registry entries. Then they get into using the registry but to be quite honest, the registry is more of a PITA for software mobility. I believe there's a mobile version of The Gimp.

Thanks for taking the time to respond everyone!

So, bottom line, I don't need to put the programes on the external drive, just my data.
I should have listened to my father eh

Photoshop recommends that you put the scratch disc on a seperate internal hard drive.

The problem with putting application on a external hard drive is that it will only work on that computer due to any dlls that get registered to the C drive. Also if you happen to hook up the drive and it picks a different drive letter than the original install it will give you problems but it can work. It can be a pain sometimes.