Can Logos 4 Be Run from a Portable (USB) Hard Drive?

I would like to access my L4 at work from my 750GB portable hard drive without installing anything on the work computer. Has anyone done anything like this with L4 (run the software completely from a portable drive)? Thank you in advance for your time and thoughts...Michael

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I have never tried this, but I doubt it could be done completely without affecting the work computer. Logos relies on registry entries, so at the very minimum you'd have to install it to get those set up correctly. But you could probably map the installation folder to the portable hard disk using a symbolic link and have all the program files and resources reside on the portable drive. Here's some info on how to create symbolic links in Vista: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-symlinks-in-windows-vista/, and I expect that would work in Windows 7 as well. If you're running an older version of Windows I think you might be out of luck.

Michael G. Halpern

Bummer! Running Win XP Pro. Thank you though.

Icarus38376

Have you thought about running a remote desktop to your home computer? I often use LogMeIn (http://www.logmein.com) and it works great.

David Paul

I have never tried this, but I doubt it could be done completely without affecting the work computer. Logos relies on registry entries, so at the very minimum you'd have to install it to get those set up correctly. But you could probably map the installation folder to the portable hard disk using a symbolic link and have all the program files and resources reside on the portable drive. Here's some info on how to create symbolic links in Vista: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-symlinks-in-windows-vista/, and I expect that would work in Windows 7 as well. If you're running an older version of Windows I think you might be out of luck.

What I clearly need to do is set up a hotlink to Rosiepedia! [I][;)]

Mike S.

Bummer! Running Win XP Pro. Thank you though.

You can accomplish the same thing by mounting an NTFS volume into an empty folder (did this with Oracle RDBMS back in the "old" days running Oracle on Windows 2000):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307889

Dave Hooton

Bummer! Running Win XP Pro. Thank you though.

If it runs on the NTFS file system you can use Junction

Nathan

Why not just create/convert it to a virtual machine and store it on the external. May even run faster depending on your computer specs...

Michael G. Halpern

create/convert it to a virtual machine

Thank you for the info. How might I go about doing this with a portable drive?

Mark Barnes

Don't forget that even if you got Logos working on a portable drive you'd still need to install the pre-requisites on the computer. There'll be no way around that.

GeoPappas

I would like to access my L4 at work from my 750GB portable hard drive without installing anything on the work computer.

I don't believe that this is possible.

Even if you choose to install L4 on another drive, L4 still installs some stuff on the boot drive (usually under C:\Users\<LOGIN>\AppData\Local\Logos4). L4 writes logs to the boot drive (usually under C:\Users\<LOGIN>\AppData\Local\Temp\Logos Log Files). And L4 puts items in the registry.

Nathan

Thank you for the info. How might I go about doing this with a portable drive?

Before you begin the process there are a few things to consider.

Can you install the VMware Player on your work machine...Do you have local admin rights?
Is there enough RAM in your work machine? 4GB would be excellent, 2GB so so...any less and I'm not sure it would be worth all the trouble.

A quick overview on the VM creation.

Goto www.vmware.com and download the free standalone converter and the free VMWare Player. (You will have to create a free account before you can download it.) This will allow you to convert your existing L4 machine into a VM. After downloading run the converter and make sure you choose "VMWare workstation" as the type, and "VMWare Player 2.5x" as the product. Choose your external drive as the destination.
Make sure you copy the VMware Player download file to your external drive. Run the download on your work computer and install the player. After a reboot open the Player and click "Open Virtual Machine" and browse to your external drive and click on your converted L4 machine. Thats it!

I think there may be better instructions here in the forums somewhere...I am slammed with work right now this is all I had time for at the moment.

Nathan

Thank you for the info. How might I go about doing this with a portable drive?

Before you begin the process there are a few things to consider.

Can you install the VMware Player on your work machine...Do you have local admin rights?
Is there enough RAM in your work machine? 4GB would be excellent, 2GB so so...any less and I'm not sure it would be worth all the trouble.

A quick overview on the VM creation.

Goto www.vmware.com and download the free standalone converter and the free VMWare Player. (You will have to create a free account before you can download it.) This will allow you to convert your existing L4 machine into a VM. After downloading run the converter and make sure you choose "VMWare workstation" as the type, and "VMWare Player 2.5x" as the product. Choose your external drive as the destination.
Make sure you copy the VMware Player download file to your external drive. Run the download on your work computer and install the player. After a reboot open the Player and click "Open Virtual Machine" and browse to your external drive and click on your converted L4 machine. Thats it!

I think there may be better instructions here in the forums somewhere...I am slammed with work right now this is all I had time for at the moment.