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Question about throwing applications onto external hard drive
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Seattle, WA
Status:
Offline
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For now, I'm worried about a more specific case of putting World of Warcraft on an external USB hard drive, but I suppose this applies to everything else as well.
I want to offload WoW onto my external hard drive so it doesn't consume precious internal hard drive space on my Macbook. However, I'm worried about things getting screwy with the settings or whatever as soon as I use AppZapper on the internal hard drive copy of World of Warcraft and then try to launch WoW off of my external hard drive.
In any case, should I even be worried about this? Are most Mac applications self contained to the extent that I can be sure that there won't be any sort of orphaned links or whatever between the application and the system when I move the application somewhere else?
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Senior User
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Austria
Status:
Offline
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Yes, they are - you can put almost all applications to external drives without any problems. However, don't use AppZapper of the internal hard drive copy. Simply drag the application to the trash. All other WoW files AppZapper would delete (preferences files) are also used by the WoW copy on the external drive and if they're not there, they will be recreated without your custom settings -> no space saved, settings lost: not good 
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Dedicated MacNNer
Join Date: Mar 2003
Status:
Offline
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Would the application look for the preferences on the main hard drive, or the external drive?
-Chris
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This signature is obsolete.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Yokohama, Japan
Status:
Offline
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The app can be anywhere. Preferences and support files are always stored in your Library (~/Library/Preferences, ~/Library/Application Support, etc.).
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Senior User
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: California
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Not seen problem except with some open source software that's been ported to Mac OS X.
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20" iMac C2D/2.4GHz 3GB RAM 10.6.8 (10H549)
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Nov 1999
Status:
Offline
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Generally speaking, applications themselves seldom have problems when being copied outside of the /Applications folder. The major exception to this rule is auto-update functionality. Some poorly-coded applications (including, sadly, many of Apple's) have problems updating if they are anywhere other than /Applications. For WoW, however, this should not be an issue.
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You are in Soviet Russia. It is dark. Grue is likely to be eaten by YOU!
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Seattle, WA
Status:
Offline
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Excellent. Thanks guys. I just moved a couple of games over to my external hard drive and wiped it off of my internal hard drive. Saved me a ton of space. ;p
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Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Los Angeles
Status:
Offline
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There's no need to use some utility to delete an application when you can just use the trash can, btw.
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"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Status:
Offline
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Yeah, I'd be more suspicious of such utilities, actually.
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