Playing World of Warcraft from an external HD?! Can it be done?
July 31st, 2010
Question by Jag: Playing World of Warcraft from an external HD?! Can it be done?
The reason Im asking
I want to know if its possible to play the game, without actually installing it on the particular computer.
I have a 500gb External HD, and was wondering if I can install the game ONTO the external (Ill download the install file from thier website tonight). But play the game from a particular PC i attach the Harddrive to.
The reason is, I want no evidence of WoW being played on this particular computer ( i have ccleaner to wipe registry after ).
SO, has anyone attempted this? And what issues will i run into? walk me through step by step please on how I can pull this off, thanks!
HAHA yes, you are correct,
WoW at work is the purpose.
And for those who would post to complain at me, dont bother, I can deal with the ethics and morals myself.
As for loadtimes, Im not overly concerned, my 500gb is a SATA as well, and the MB of my work computer has Sata.. (its a advertising PC, so its loaded). I have the plug at home so Ill have to open her up, but I dont mind.
So ya, Im going to install tonight ONTO my external (I have downloaded the latest installer file right from wow website, and it does allow you to select target install location, so i think im in business). My only concern is registry issues..
But i also have ccleaner to wipe that after 
.
SO. Ill post my results tomorrow. If anyone has any experience with this, please post and assist. Wish me luck!
I HAVE NEWS! For those who want to know, My tests came out successful, but only after one headache to the next. So Ill brief on what I did.
First, All I simply did, was copy the entire World of Warcraft folder onto my external, JUST the folder and all its contents.
When I got to the office this morning, I transfered the folder to my work PC (to keep loading smooth of course). Wow.exe had major critical errors, never worked, I deleted the path file, ran repairs, allowed it to repatch, same issues, NO FIX HERE PEOPLE.
I thought all hope was lost.
For the hell of it, I decided to run wow right off of the folder on the external. WHAM! Works. And it works fluent and fast, I had to drop vid specs to keep it smooth on work pc, but wow. Works fantastic. No problems, 3 quests down already! Its doable ppl, dont bother transfering it to new PC, just play from external! (even my addons work great, go fig). Its smooth, no long loads, (i have a good external, 500gb SATA). YAY!
Best answer:
Answer by Ragan that is Called Ragan
I would suggest you try it out and post the results, I’m curious about this myself. I would imagine it would work.
What do you think? Answer below!
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You can play it from an external. I wouldn’t however. The load times are going to be unbearable.
Also, I don’t know if it will work the way you want it to. You’d probably have to partition it. Have a small partition for a boot sector (you might not need this) and have windows installed as well as the game.
That way you’re bypassing the system’s hard drive (you wouldn’t need CCleaner). Just go in to the bios of the computer you want to use and set the primary boot to usb device and the secondary your hard drive.
Doing this means you’re just using the hardware, none of the memory.
You don’t need to install Windows to the external hard drive. WoW doesn’t even use the registry.
But yes the load times will be longer due to read/write being limited than a hard drive. Also it will wear out the external hard drive faster than normal.
Playing at work are we?
I read an article about this yesterday and it can be done, but the article did not go into a lot of detail. It might have been on WoW Insider.
The first issue is getting it to install onto the external drive rather than the default C: drive. If the install program offers a “custom” install option that could be easy enough.
The second issue is the speed. Im assuming this is a USB drive, and the transfer rate could slow you down, but the article I read (which didn’t go in to detail, just mentioned it in passing) said that the program ran smoothly.
Third issue: the graphics card has to be able to handle the load. You won’t be able to plug this in to many computers with integral graphics and shared memory.
Fourth issue: Add-ons. You’ll have to manually download the add-ons and place them in the Wow add on folder. If you let an auto installer like Curse do the work, the add-ons will go who-knows-where.
I’m almost positive that if you install on C: and then copy the files, it will *not* work since the registry will not be able to find it.