I have setup the "PortableApps" suite if you will on my USB flash drive.
I am thrilled with being able to do this so I can have the many apps I use no matter what PC I am on with my own settings.
What I find however, is that some of the apps while they work well, run slower from my flash drive.
One example of this is Firefox. It works great, never really have a problem, but of course does not perform as well.
What I would like to do a build a function into my portable apps setup to "MoveIn" and "MoveOut" of a given machine, which would essentially copy a configured list of the available portable apps to the local hard drive (assuming you have permissions) "flip" the portableapps menu item to point to the local version of the apps, then when finished remove the copied apps from the local drive.
Even better, would be the selected or configured apps would be moved to the local drive then moved back, which would make it easier for app configuration changes such as firefox getting an additional addon while on the local machine and then being avilablae when moved back to the usb flash drive.
Has anyone done this, or thought about adding this to the portableapps menu?
Can I add this to the portableapps menu?
Can the portableapps menu have sections?
Thanks,
CJ
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The problem with this approach is that it gets very messy very fast. Your Firefox profile, for instance, stands at over 50MB due to the anti-phishing filter. So you'd be looking at VERY slow startup and close times. To the point that most people would think it stopped working. Similarly, Thunderbird's mail store can be immense (mine is 1GB). Basically, the only apps that would really benefit are the ones that would be the slowest to copy back and forth. And then there are the privacy implications (you'd leave all your passwords and stuff behind if the PC crashed... or someone could unerase them even if we delete them after copying them back unless we used something like Eraser on them).
The only app that really slows down on average speed drives is Firefox. If you disable session saving as prompted when you install, it will speed things up a lot. You can disable a couple other things to further improve speed as detailed here:
https://portableapps.com/support/firefox_portable#performance
Finally, Firefox 3.5 does improve speed on flash drives due to decreased writes. You can get the beta in portable form here:
https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/test
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
I didn't do any research when I bought my flash drive - I thought speed-wise they were all about the same. I got the cheapest 4GB drive with free shipping on Newegg, and as an added bonus it displays its volume name and free space on the exterior (Corsair Readout), but it also happens to be the 3rd fastest flash drive of anybody up here, according to a topic we did a few months ago. I'm bested by a Corsair Flash Voyager, and both of us by some no-name flash drive I've never heard of. As such, Firefox performs just as fast on my flash drive as it does on my PC at home.
What the topic creator is suggesting would be better handled by a launcher. The launcher would copy the often-written files to the local drive upon run, and upon exit it would copy them back, and then offer to securely delete them (otherwise standard deletion, e.g. if you trust the machine, or it's yours). I don't think coding a launcher is entirely above me, I just haven't been motivated to try it. But I have a game I'd like to make portable, and it would need this feature. It runs great, but save or load (or go from map to map) and it takes 3-4 minutes. The data isn't even personal, so it wouldn't need the extra security; a standard delete would do the job right.