Installing VNs on an external hard drive

[pandaman123]

hi, i was wondering if there were any problems installing vns on an external hard drive. assuming the drive is pretty much always connected to my laptop, would there be any disadvantage to doing so?

sorry if this has been asked before, but i searched on google and couldn't find anything.

thanks

[Meat_Bun1]

I haven't had any major problems with this, and I play most of my VNs on a flash drive. The only things worth noting are that sometimes, the save files are still on the internal hard drive. So if you change computers, you may not have the same save data. You probably won't have that problem since your external drive stays connected to one computer most of the time.

Also, it can be a bit slow at loading text, but I have only noticed this problem once or twice, and it only happens when I run many other things at once on the computer.

[Clephas]

It depends on the VN.  Some VNs require a disc to be in the drive at all times, others require that the registry made when you installed the game in your computer exist in all computers you play it in, and others let you do what you want.  Light's games, for instance, require the registry, so you can't play them from an external on multiple computers without installing them through those computers.  Akatsuki Works games, once they are ready to play, can be shifted manually to an external drive and played from them (I have a thumb drive with every Akatsuki Works and Propeller game, as well as several other favorites, permanently installed). 

In the end, the answer is that it depends on the game.

[RedK]

4 minutes ago, Clephas said:

It depends on the VN.  Some VNs require a disc to be in the drive at all times, others require that the registry made when you installed the game in your computer exist in all computers you play it in, and others let you do what you want.  Light's games, for instance, require the registry, so you can't play them from an external on multiple computers without installing them through those computers.  Akatsuki Works games, once they are ready to play, can be shifted manually to an external drive and played from them (I have a thumb drive with every Akatsuki Works and Propeller game, as well as several other favorites, permanently installed). 

In the end, the answer is that it depends on the game.

Really? Acta Est Fabula works perfectly for me after I formatted the OS Drive which had win8  to install win7.

[Clephas]

21 minutes ago, RedK said:

Really? Acta Est Fabula works perfectly for me after I formatted the OS Drive which had win8  to install win7.

I was thinking Amantes... and everything made post-Soranica seems to fail when I try to play it across multiple PCs, which means I can only use the install on my external to play it on the pc I installed it from.  I never tried it with Acta, since I was only interested in getting the most complete version of Dies Irae on there. 

Edit: The convenience of installing something on an external is basically being able to play it on any pc that can handle its spec requirements... I got tired of having to reinstall stuff all the time, so I just bought a 1tb high-speed thumb drive and installed my favorite games on it as I went.  Unfortunately, I kept running into problems with ones that wouldn't let me set the saves to the game folder, ones that require the game to be registered inside the system of the pc in question, and ones that require disc insertion.

[pandaman123]

great, thanks for the responses!