Can you install a game to a USB flash drive ??

[Raje]

So any ways, I have a lot of free time at school. I tend to play around with the school computer which are actually decent systems. Is it possible to install a video game onto a USB flash drive, or will I have to use a external hard drive.

Basically I want to be able to take my game and controller into school and plug them both into the usb ports and play, then unplug and walk away with out leaving a trace of a downlaod or an install. Also they give you the limited rights thing and I don't want to have to waste my time restarting the computer and making my self an admin to play the game then remove myself.( Which By the way I did at a Local Brands Mart-- man was that sales person very very very confused )

 

[KGB-911]

It will always install part of it onto the HDD. it is possible to run from a flash drive, but as soon as you run it, it will need the HDD for some config's.

 

[1nteger]

really interesting question, raje...but the only way to find out is to try it. Of course, you'll need to make sure you have a drive with enough capacity for the game - anything over 1Gb might become very cost-inefficent and most new games exceed 1GB. Then, if uir talking about multiplayer, you'll have to consider furture patches etc...will u need to keep patching the game to run it? How much spare capacity on the drive will you need? Not sure how u could do this without leaving some sort of trace on the 'host' pc - I reckon u would have to leave something from the gameplay in the registry perhaps or keep losing save files etc. What game u got in mind?

 

[Alf]

I play a small flash game on my Flash usb on school computers.

 

[Cache-man]

I think you'll just have to try a few games and see if they work. It is very difficult to give a definitive answer here as games all use very different configs for installation and saving settings/savegame files etc. I think many modern games however would try to leave some kind of trace on the host PC.
I think you might be better off trying this with a external HDD though, with a USB2 connection, as many newer games simply wont fit on a flash drive.
Let us know if you try any games out, and which ones work. I think it will be interesting to know the results.

 

[CSUnited14]

you do alf which ones i have a good site called experimentalgameplay.com check it out!!!

 

[Me__2001]

you could install it onto the drive at home and it would work just at home, to use it at school you would need to find a way of making the registry keys if you dont then the game probably wont work.

i had the same idea about using MSN messenger but was told by a boy in my computing class that it wouldn't work

 

[kashifns]

I think most of games will not work with USB flash disk or either with external hard drive as some dll's and registry entries are required from running Operating System. Only games which can work fine is just a small flash games. You can get loads of them from http://www.miniclip.com.

What I think is that those games are fine for school point of view. Obviously you are not in school to play games. LOL... Hee hee .

 

[Raje]

SO how about I get a 20GB external hardrive, install windows onto it and the game. Then go up to the host computer and try to run it??? Or will I have to go into BIOS and enable my hardrive as the primary boot volume--- will I be able to use schools lan then??? A 10 or 20 GB should be more than enough right?? Winows is like what 6GB? and most games under 5GB ?

 

[kashifns]

By default Removable Storage is selcted as First boot partition so you might not require to change any thing from BIOS (Do you have access to Bios as well???) For this obviously you need to restart the computer which you said you don't want to (In your first forum post). So external HDD idea might fail.

Secondaly to be very honest, I am not sure that you can install Operating System on external HDD or not? If any body have tried this so please confirm.