Windows 10: QUESTION: Efficacy of Running Portable Apps on Internal Hard Drive ?

Q. Which features are available in the Sandboxie paid version?
Sandboxie - FAQ Licensing

I hope this proves of value to other Members.

~ Alan

 

Hello, Power Users:

I imagine this question has been asked often... but I can NOT find it anywhere... in this forum... or Google Search... PortableApps.com... but could not find an answer to this question:

• What is the efficacy or downside of copying and running portable apps to a notebook SSD or HDD?

Copying a PORTABLE APP is CLEANER than an installation... and would eliminate the constant drive fragmentation associated with software installs.

What am I missing in connecting the dots? LOL.

Thanks in advance for prompt and detailed responses.

~ Alan

:)

 

Do I have BitLocker on Windows 10

I'm running Windows 10 and have a new portable external hard drive.

How can I password-protect this drive? Does Windows 10 come with the capability to lock an external drive?

(I have an older external drive that has built-in security and I am surprised that this is not a standard feature with external drives, especially portable ones, where they contain an image of a password-protected internal hard drive).

Moved from: Windows / Windows 10 / Devices & drivers

 

Windows 10 creator's update has bricked my Toshiba laptop

Greg,

I had the HDD/SSD as the first boot device.

Your question gave me an idea. This laptop has an eSATA port. On the chance that something was wrong with the SATA connection to the internal drive I hooked up the boot hard drive to the eSATA port. Then I did a clean install to the drive and much to my
surprise Windows installed. Apparently there is something wrong with the SATA connection to the internal hard drive. While having an external boot drive cuts down on the portability of this laptop, I've actually been using it as a media server for streaming
video and don't really carry it around. This will work for me. I think this may really have been a case of having a hardware failure at the same time as I was updating. What are the odds!

Thanks for your help.

 

It depends what apps if it's small it's not a problem but if it's something like Photoshop it will still write to disk

 

Howdy, Samuria.

I'm originally considering Google Chrome, and utilities.

THX. ~ Alan

 

Fragmentation isn't an issue, as by default automatic maintenance regularly defragments the drive anyway.

The main downside is that a Portable App takes a little longer to load when you first open it. There's a portable app environment that has to be loaded first. Once opened, there seems to be little difference.

 

Hi, Bree:

You don't think there's much advantage to minimizing REGISTRY population?

 

It is going to be a little harder for Windows to find and manage portable software, especially if you want to use them as default, you would have to assign them manually. By the way, even portable software writes something to the registry, otherwise it would not work, you will just have Windows apps and Portable apps separate and that is it. It is not better or worse, it is just optional. I use PatchMyPC, which auto-downloads and auto-installs most software for me, similar to PortableApps, which I also use, but only on my USB.

Unless you do not intend to update them, there is always going to be drive fragmentation.

 

Howdy, TairikuOkami.

I had better. Portable apps over the years and came to understand they were completely independent of the windows registry period period period but apparently not.

Apparently there's no bias or enthusiasm that portable apps outside of using them on a USB.

Appreciate.

~ Alan

 

The problem is the common name "portable apps". Each portable app is different, it has different requirements, it was created using "cheats" to run portable and more robust apps, like office, require more integration to Windows. Portable name only guarantees, that you can run it without installing, nothing else. Take an on-demand scanner Zemana portable for example, you run and then remove it, but it install 2 drivers, which keeps running forever and might conflict with realtime AV, like cause BSOD.

 

Sorry for a bit off topic but I have deleted Zemana portable after finding what you posted. I had to use Autoruns in admin mode to delete the ZAM drivers, reboot then clean the registry and files from C:\Windows and C:\Windows\System32\drivers folders. That IS NOT A PORTABLE if you ask me. Services and registry?

I really appreciate the heads up on that. I will never use their program again.

Many thanks @TairikuOkami

 

True portable apps does not install any drivers, nor install any keys in the registry. You can run portable apps from any medium that has some sort of write support, since they still need to store their configuration somewhere. That is local HDDs, Thumb Drives and Memory Cards.

I have been using portable apps exactly for this reason, on devices/computers where my user account has had limited access. If my above statement weren't true, I could never run portable apps on these devices because of permission restrictions.

 

Hi there

SSD's don't ever need any fragmentation fixes - no moving parts -- the whole disc works like a 2D array (map like the X-Y co-ordinates) so any address is just as reachable as any other in the same time frame. With an HDD if bits of file are scattered all over the HDD then you have rotational delay to reach the bits of the file, read time etc.

That said though -- in over 30 years of using Windows I can honestly say I've never found defragging a drive has ever resulted in any significant improvement whatsoever - and these days with much larger HDD's with bigger caches fragmentation is not an issue -- The OS can pre-read a lot of data into the HDD's cache which eliminates a lot of the delay with having to access all the chains in a file - the algorithms for pre-fetch and read are very sophisticated these days.

Windows 3.11 !!!!! Still works on a VM.





If you feel the need to defrag a disc - it's a lot quicker to simply image it with something like Free Macrium (Image - not CLONE it) , optionally reformat but not necessary in fact and then restore.

Just my take on this -- others might have different experiences but from a technical point these days with the modern W7/W10 type of Windows OS'es from a technical standpoint I can't see what defragging really buys you.

As for portable apps - these are usually done to avoid "installs" - but beware as people often use these to get round "Locked down PC's" where you can't install your own software -- corporate PC's for example are usually locked down.

To create some portable apps there are often things written that bypass all the ususal rules of windows so be careful if installing and using these.

However there's no reason why any of these would cause any more / less use on a Disc than a normal app -- usually the app is read from the storage device into memory and then executed - only if you have a severe shortage of RAM should it need to access the disc a lot -- editing programs like photoshop etc - especially video editing will need a lot of "scratch space" --that's a different issue - but usually there are settings in the program where to allocate that and it's only used as temporary or wok storage and is dispensed with when you end the application.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Jimbo:

I think I have been DISUADED by Members to pursue utilizing PORTABLE APPS copied to the SSD or HDD.

I do have to take issue with you in regards to DEFRAGGING: daily defragging has made a huge performance improvement on my:

• 2010 Gateway EC5801u laptop
  500 GB HD (Model ST9500325AS - 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s).

My intent in starting this thread was to determine if PORTABLE APPS have gained main stream acceptance for replacing standard installation requirements... however Member responses have much dissuaded me from pursuing this direction.

Thank you ALL for your comments on this issue.

Unless someone offers a very different approach... this issue is now RESOLVED.

THX. ~ Alan