Can I run apps on an external drive?

Can you run apps saved on external drives? Is it possible to run them and save your app data only to the external drive?

1. It varies depending on the application; ones which used an installer as opposed to drag-copying them to the Applications folder may not run.
2. If the folders containing it are stored on the external, yes. This may require creating symbolic links or putting the entire home folder on that drive.
(91168)

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Can I put apps on an external drive and run them from there?

I want to know can I put apps downloaded from the Mac App store onto an external hard drive and launch them from there? The storage on my mac is full and I want to put apps onto an external drive to create more space on my mac.

Bad idea. See this:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3472949?q=run apps on an external drive
Ciao.

MacBook Air Hard Drive too small - can I run applications from an external drive or is there a better solution?

I just got a MacBook Air 11" 10.7.2 2GB/64GB. I love it, but the internal drive is sooo small. Occasionally I need to take projects home from work or travel with my computer. Is there any way to run apps (Final Cut Studio, CS5, Office 10, etc) from an external drive? I am trying to convert over from my Macbook Pro (running Snow Leopard) and I can't seem to find a solution.
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Samantha,
It's best to keep your applications on the internal drive and consider external storeage for your data.
Your choices are direct attached storeage to the USB port (external portable USB drives), storeage on your home or work network, or cloud-based storeage, like DropBox.
You can also look at slimming down your OSX installation on your MBA by removing unwanted fonts and printer drivers.
Btw, you will struggle to run CS5 and Final Cut Studio on a MBA with 2GB RAM. Only install the applications you really need on your MBA.
Can I ask which model MacBook Pro you are migrating from?

How can I run GarageBand from an external drive that is not my boot drive?

Hi, I'd like to move my GarageBand loops and songs I've composed to my external hard drive. I have moved my iTunes library to the external, I found good instructions on how to do that, but I have not seen any for GarageBand. Is it possible to move both loops and created songs, or just loops, or what? Any guidance would be much appreciated...

Is it possible to move {...} loops
http://www.bulletsandbones.com/GB/GBFAQ.html#loopsexternaldrive
and created songs
just move them

Can I install Leopard on an external drive to run my computer?

Since it seems my hard drive has totally bit the dust, can I install Leopard on the external drive I use for Time Machine, and run my desktop from that drive? Could I run it from an external drive totally dedicated to Leopard? I am buying a new desktop soon, but I need info off of this machine. Can I plug in my Time Machine drive to my laptop and be able to use it without losing data?

Elizabeth Salcido wrote:
Thanks so much.
Youa re welcome!
I figured I would have to use a second drive. At least when I get my new desktop I will have a drive for Time Machine for both desktop and laptop.
If you really plan to keep the laptop around after you get your desktop, I would recommend replacing its internal hard drive. While running your laptop off an external is possible, it should be considered a stopgap measure. i wouldn't do it on a permanent basis. For one, as you'll find out, it's quite a bit slower than when using the internal drive.

Can I transfer iPad/iPhone apps to an external drive?

I maintain the apps for my five grandchildren's iPads. They are constantly asking me to search through all the apps we have purchased in the past, transferring old favorites back to their iPads. They love to browse through the apps in my iTunes account on my computer. However, these apps are now taking up over 80 GB of precious storage. I know that they could simply download the ones I have paid for; but they often cannot remember the names and must view the list on my computer. (Also I have learned, the hard way, that when I give them my password I pay for in-app purchases.) Is it possible to transfer the apps to an external drive that would show up when I connect their iPads to my computer? I desperately need the space. Thanks!!!

I maintain the apps for my five grandchildren's iPads. They are constantly asking me to search through all the apps we have purchased in the past, transferring old favorites back to their iPads. They love to browse through the apps in my iTunes account on my computer. However, these apps are now taking up over 80 GB of precious storage. I know that they could simply download the ones I have paid for; but they often cannot remember the names and must view the list on my computer. (Also I have learned, the hard way, that when I give them my password I pay for in-app purchases.) Is it possible to transfer the apps to an external drive that would show up when I connect their iPads to my computer? I desperately need the space. Thanks!!!

Can I run applications from an external hard drive

Hi I am a sort a new Mac user and I would like to run Lightroom from an external drive. Is this possible on a Mac?
Thanks!

Yes, but it will load a little slower. If it does disk I/O from the external then that will also be slower.

Can I install os9 on an external drive from mavericks

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I tried to install directly to an external drive, but when I click on the Mac OS Install icon, I get the message "You can't open the application "%@" because it may be damaged or incomplete." The icon for Mac OS Install is the generic page with an A. Figuring that Mavericks doesn't recognize the app. Then I restarted and held down the C key - no luck.

I understand, but was hoping I boot off an external drive in 9. Thanks for your response and I apologize for my late response.

Running audio from an external drive question

HI there,
i am waiting the delivery of a high quality firewiredrive to run my audio tracks for my g5 imac.
I am a beginner at logic and i have logic express7.0 with logic pro 8 on its way.
In fact am a beginner at computer music. For the last 5 years i have been recording on an akai dps16 so this is a big learning curve right now, thought i have already made my 1st c.d. on logic express. Logic is awesome.
so
i am trying to get my head around running audio from an external drive as everyone recommends and instead of waiting for the new firewire drive to arrive i thought i'll learn this using my 500gig maxtor usb2.0 drive.
i have sussed out the record path business and all seems well. I have created 24 tracks of audio and i can see them in the audio folder in my logic project in my maxtor drive. So (i think) i have learned how to run audio from the maxtor, but what seems a bit odd to me is that when i run the exact same song from the internal drive ( I copied it from the maxtor drive) there doesnt seem to be any increase in the load of the system memory or the cpu as seen on activity monitor or logics audio performance meter.
I would have expected the identical song running from the internal drive to be more taxing on the computer.
Maybe i am doing something wrong but i dont think so.
Any help would be greatfully appreciated
Tom

The problem with internal drive is that is accessed by the OS and by Logic.
With a powerful Mac 24 tracks recorded at 16 bits and a sampling rate of 44100Khz are not n issue but increasing these values or the number of tracks the problem will appear and you will see the disk I/O meter going up very fast.
At that point you will begin to experiment audio hiccups before and a song stop later.
The same problem appears with drivers that have a reduced band (like USB 2.0) while firewire ones are faster, more stable and don't load the CPU.
cheers
rob

How to stop apps on an external drive from launching or showing up in menus

I use SuperDuper to keep a bootable back up of my main drive. The problem is those apps show up in the list of apps that can open a particular file, and if its the same version on the main drive and the external, you'll often launch the app from the external drive.
This is a especially a problem when using the "open with" feature. Is there a way to make sure it only reads apps installed on the main drive.

Hi,
sorry to hijack, but I have a similar question you may be able to help with.
I too keep a Super Duper clone, but on a second internal drive - I often use the "Open With" contextual menu option to open files, and it bugs the **** out of me that I have to wait several seconds for the second drive to spin up - freezing the Finder in the process. What's even more annoying is that I also use the contextual menu to move things to the trash, which invariably stalls on "Open With" because it's above it in the menu.
Do you know of any means of solving this increasingly annoying problem. I know I could simply unmount the second drive, but that interferes with Super Duper's scheduled backups.
Any suggestions would be appreciated
Regards

Can itunes run from a personal cloud drive, can itunes run from a personal cloud drive

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Thanks

It will work if it's used as a network drive which contains your iTunes library in the same way your external does now. Although it will demand more from your network than your current configuration does but shouldn't be a problem if your network is working correctly.

How to run iphoto 08 off external drive?

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Quit iPhoto and drag your iPhoto library to the external drive (just one big drag - do not drag components)
Then launch iPhoto while depressing the option (alt) key and point use the select library option to point to the external drive - verify your library on the external drive by using it for a while and then you can delete the iPhoto library on your internal drive or you can switch back to it and delete some photos by using iPhoto to move them to the iPhoto trash and emptying the iPhoto trash
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LN

Can't boot snow leopard from external drive

I have a copy of snow leopard installed on a separate usb hard drive which I use to run some PowerPC programmes under rosetta. I can attach this USB drive to my Mac Pro and also to an Intel Macbook and choose to start up on this external drive without any issues. However when I try restarting my new 2011 iMac on this external usb drive the machine crashes every time with a kernal panic. Is this problem unique to me or does everyone else have this issue with new iMacs. Mine is a 27" 3.4ghz i& with 12ghb ram installed running 10.72. Is their soemthing I can do to resolve this problem?

I have now solved the problem of being able to boot from either Snow Leopard or Lion on a new Mid 2011 iMac. This is how I did it.
1. Attach an external USB drive to an earlier Mac or borrow one from a friend. In my case I used my 2009 Unibody Macbook (which has Lion installed on it but does allow you to install Snow Leopard on an attached device) Put the Snow Leopard install disc in this machine and tell it to install Snow Leopard on your attached USB Drive.
2. Start up the Macbook (or whatever machine you are using) and get it to restart on the attached USB drive so that it boots up in Snow Leopard. Then when Snow Leopard is up and running on the attached external drive, do a software update to bring it up to 10.68 (the current version). This step is important as I found that if I plugged in the external USB drive into the iMac with only operating system 10.6 installed it would cause a kernal panic on start up when I choose to start up on the external USB drive.
3. With Snow Leopard updated to system 10.68 you can now plug it into your iMac and restart the iMac booting into Snow Leopard from the external USB drive. You do this by either going to System Preferences>Startup disk and choosing the external drive, or by holding down the option key when you restart your Mac and choosing the external USB drive.
4. The next step is to make your iMac dual boot now that you know it can run Snow Leopard successfully from an external USB drive. To do this, go into Utilities>Disk Utility and select your main drive. Select the main disk (with Lion on it) and then choose Partition and choose 2 Partitions. Drag the first partition bundary line down to make the second partition size as small as possible. In my case I had a stock 1TB drive and the smallest partition size it would allow me was 70gb. Create the second partition (assuming you have spare space on your drive to allow this to happen). This will then create a second hard drive icon on your desktop. I renamed mine "Snow Leopard startup".
5. Download the free (and excellent) utility Carbon Copy Cloner and use it to copy your Snow Leopard operating sytem from your attached USB external drive to your new partition.
6. That's it! Now you can choose to start up your iMac from either Lion or Snow Leopard using either method mentioned in 3 above.
7. As a final step I suggest your install your Rosetta only programmes in your new Snow Leopard partition so that you can access them easily and keep them all together.

Want to run iTunes from an external drive, how?

I want to run iTunes from my external drive, I have already made back ups of my library and media files but I can't figure out how to save iTunes to the external drive? When you download itunes it just automatically downloads to the computer. Can you even do this? If not, how can I use the saved info on my external drive (library and media files) with my itunes on the computer. The problem we are trying to solve is a lack of space on our computer and we want to free as much space as possible. Thanks!

I want to run iTunes from my external drive, I have already made back ups of my library and media files but I can't figure out how to save iTunes to the external drive?
Drag the iTunes library to the external drive, launch iTunes with the Shift key held down, and point it there.
(56927)

How Can I Keep Music on an External Drive?

I've dealt with this issue before and asked questions about it, but I STILL don't understand how iTunes works when it comes to its "Library" "Media Folder" etc.
Can anyone break it down for me exactly how it all works? Is there a good resource to explain it?
The basic problem I have is the same one that many people have: I keep my actual music on an external hard drive. However, if I launch iTunes when that hard drive isn't plugged in, iTunes somehow changes so that all my music vanishes no matter what I do. Plugging in my hard drive doesn't help. iTunes has created a new Library that contains a list of all my music but with no idea where that music is. I try to tell iTunes where that music is, but nothing works.
You'd think an easy fix would be to always plug in the hard drive first. However, even that doesn't help. iTunes will sometimes not see that hard drive when it is plugged in, and I have no way to predict when it sees the drive and when it doesn't. I start adding new music or podcasts, and it might all be being added to some new library iTunes created and I'm totally lost once again.
On the Preferences/Advanced tab there is the option to change your Media Folder location, but that doesn't work. My music is on the external hard drive, but there is no Media Folder there. The iTunes Media Folder is here: My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media
I've read that you can hold down the Shift key when you launch iTunes and then you get the option to "Choose Library" or "Create Library." The idea is that iTunes has created a new empty Library and that you just have to select your old Library to get things back to normal. However, there is only ever one Library file listed. There is no new one and old one to select from. There is no Library file on the external drive, either. So I have no idea what I'm looking for.
If I choose "Create Library", it then asks me for a "Folder name". I don't know what that is, either. I thought I'd just have to give my new Library a name. The more I try to deal with this issue, the more confused I get.
To further muddy the waters, under the "General" tab on the iTunes preferences page, it lists my library as "Doug's Library", the name I gave it long ago. However, the option to choose "Doug's Library" never comes up. I've never seen a file with that name or a Library with that name. So what is that all about?
I've used Windows Explorer to go into the iTunes folder to see what files are there, and then it gets more confusing. There is a file called "iTunes Library" and a second file called "iTunes Music Library." Why does the music have a second Library file?
Any suggestions or guidance? There has to be a way to cut through all this confusion. I've had so many problems with iTunes along these lines that I've literally stopped using it to listen to music. It's just not worth the hassle. I spend far more hours trying "fix" iTunes than listening to music with it.
Thanks to anyone who can point me in the right direction.
Doug

I do the same thing as you do...
My music is on an external drive as to not use up gigabytes of storage that need not be used for media.
There are a couple basic principles to iTunes that I believe you should know.
1. iTunes is not a media storage program. It does not store your media "in iTunes". It simply is an organization tool for your media already on a hard disk.
2. As iTunes is not a storage mechanism, it has no way to "know" whether or not the media that is listed is actually there. This is where the "design" of iTunes comes into play.
I like to think of iTunes as a bread-crumb trail. The "music" in iTunes, isn't actually there. The bread crumb is the location on the external hard drive.
If that bread crumb trail disappears (in this case the external drive you use). If said external drive is not plugged in, that bread crumb trail is not able to be followed. iTunes is "lost" and unable to find the media. The only way to remedy this is to place the media on your local drive.
To address your issue of the library. If you hold down shift, you can select your library on your external drive. It will be a file with an .itl extension. The folder name will be your external drive.
I go into edit > preferences > advanced and set my library to the correct location. Make sure you check the box "Copy to iTunes Folder when importing" (or whatever it says).
You can't fix the issue of iTunes not seeing the media if your drive is unplugged unless you physically move the content to your OS HDD...Or any other HDD you use.

Can I run apps on an external drive?

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