Can I store program software on a external hard drive ?

Hi gary62,

Yes, in general, you should be able to store program software on an
external hard drive, because an external hard drive works just like an
internal drive.

The only exception I can think of would be a program that requires
that it be installed on the system disk or some specific drive such as
C:.  There are such programs, but I think they are fairly rare these
days.  (This would be an amateurish design.  You might find it in old
shareware.)  This should not be a problem with most, if not all,
commercial retail software.

If you are just asking about storing backup copies of program software
on the drive, not installing it there, there should be no problem,
except that a copy protection scheme might get in your way, but that
would not be any different from what you would encounter if you tried
to do the same thing with an internal drive.

If you need any more information about this, please ask for a clarification.

Regards,

--efn

Computer gurus used to consider it anathema to back up programs,
because until recently it wasn't possible to do so in any reliable
way. Nowadays, however, a good backup program like Norton's Ghost 10.0
enables one to create and incrementally back up a mirror image of his
or her entire hard drive on an external drive, and that, of course,
includes both program files and data files. Using such a system means
never again having to pick and choose what deserves backing up and
what doesn't.