Windows 10: Can you copy program files over to an external hard drive?

That's all I am saying. Not impossible and in 10 years time you will be able to do it. It's funny how people go crazy over an idea. If it wasn't for pushing the boundaries. We wouldn't have what we have today. The end. It will be done in the future. When it's affordable to do. And they can still make huge profits.

 

They are in business to make profit, as big as possible. Even free Linux developers have to make some money to keep going on. Many distros have been abandoned for that raeson.
Anyway. I think Steam has some way of transferring their games to another disk so it's quite possible for other SW developers to do same thing if they only wanted to.
There are games and programs other than ones clearly marked as Portable that can work from any storage device. They are mostly ones that don't write anything in registry, use shared or have to register DLLs. First instances of MOHA and COD games were like that.

 

When I reinstall Windows, I look at it as an opportunity to not reinstall a bunch of crap. I install many things with ninite, which makes a nice single installer. I don't reinstall games I am not playing. The rest of the apps are in a folder, probably only about 6 things total. Only takes an hour or so.

I'd suggest a clean install, then take an image. Then install the stuff you absolutely need, then take another image. Use that second image later to get back to a quick starting point. That first image is good for times when maybe there was a big change, like MS office, or the Adobe Suite or ProTools. Perhaps you would like to start fresh verses installing that 2nd image, uninstalling and then reinstalling.

 

I have 66 programs on my C drive. With Macrium (free) making regular images of the C drive I am hoping that if I get a crash etc. one of those images will save me.

However, it is possible for a fault to occur un-noticed some time ago which is contained in all my images but which one day becomes critical for some reason and none of the images will return me to a place before that un-noticed fault occurred. My reaction would be to download from Microsoft's site the current Win 10 system and then laborously reinstall all those (like Adobe Photoshop) which undoubtedly require installation, and simply copy the many simpler programs that do not. I don't see any simpler slution.

But perhaps permanently storing macrium images every six months (which hopefully would not contain the fault) might save a lot of time.

I keep a list of the names of all my 66 programs so that I know which to re-install or copy.

 

What are you trying to do? You can simply insert a new licence code to upgrade to Pro or use disk imaging like Macrium reflect if you want to move your installation to another drive.