Installing Games to a USB Thumb Drive?

[trowand]

Hey, with USB thumb drives getting bigger and bigger and cheaper and cheaper, isn't it possible to install a game onto a USB thumb drive and run it from there? Wouldn't your load and save times be like lightning fast because it would be to and from flash? Is this possible? And, would the game install be truly portable like from computer to computer or would it only run while attached to the original PC because of registry entries made to the internal drive in the O.S.? I know that's a lot of questions but with 2 and 4GB thumb drives costing so little, it would be awesome to be able to carry your game and the saves with you from PC to PC not to mention the speed bonus. Would I need something like Ceedo or U3? What do ya think? THANKS!

[pam123]

You know we must be really close to this but registry issues and the law are likely in the way.
Also there would be the transfer speed problem, or maybe that would only affect hd usb drives?
This is the sort of thing you'd keep watch for.

[LeftyAce]

Speed-wise, it might be faster, but pam's right, any usb disk, flash or otherwise, will have the USB bottleneck. Registry will also get you if you go portable, but that wouldn't be a problem on the original computer.

Just installed Supreme Commander, and the install was 10GB.......so you'd need one heck of a flash drive :-)

[Kuch]

If you have a game on your PC and you want to also go and play it on your friend's PC, you could load it to your jump drive on your PC and then also load it again on your friend's PC. In theory, it should be in both registries and you could play it from your thumb drive on either computer. This wouldn’t do anything for the USB bottleneck. I say give it a try and let us know how it works.

[LeftyAce]

You can certainly transfer saved games in that manner; copy and paste the save files onto your pen and over to the friends computer. That dual install is, I think, in violation of your license though. If the friend has the game as well, the save transfer will work fine. I've done it prior to a re format.

[Kuch]

Originally Posted by LeftyAce You can certainly transfer saved games in that manner; copy and paste the save files onto your pen and over to the friends computer. That dual install is, I think, in violation of your license though. If the friend has the game as well, the save transfer will work fine. I've done it prior to a re format.

LA - Your right about the dual install. I was thinking faster than I type. I should have clarified that his friend would have to have his own copy of the game.

[KilluminatiStyle]

If you have 2 computers and you want to use the game on both VIA the pen drive it would probably be possible if you also export the registry entries the game installs on the original PC. Then just double click the resulting .reg files on your OTHER pc and you should be in business. HOWEVER, I don't know if this still violates any laws... but I think that if your installing a game you purchased on more then one of your own PC's then you're ok. ALSO there may be some issues with certain .dll files or .sys files that games may install.

IMO, there are just too many variables involved and it's probably not worth the headache. But if you've got the time and patients then I think it could be done.