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Move App Store apps to external drive?

G

grandall

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 13, 2006
10
0
Hello everyone -

Is it possible and safe to move applications from the App Store to external hard drives or USB flash sticks? If so, is there anything that needs to be done to keep everything working correctly other than to just drag the icon from the Applications folder over to where I want it to go? I'm short on space on my MacBook Air and would like to move some larger apps off of my internal drive if possible.
 
Mal

Mal

macrumors 603
Jan 6, 2002
6,252
18
Orlando
Shouldn't be a problem. They are required to be fully contained, and should only leave preferences in most cases on your internal drive. Poorly written ones might react badly to being moved, but most should be fine.

Of course, and this isn't universally true, apps are rarely what take up a lot of space. You may find you're better served trying to move media off instead.

jW
 
W

WesCole

macrumors 6502a
Jul 1, 2010
756
14
Texas
Sorry to revive this old thread, but does anyone know if I move apps to an external or optibay hard drive, will they still be updated? I would think they would, but would like someone who has first-hand experience.

Thanks.
 
S

smphoto74

macrumors newbie
Nov 5, 2011
23
0
WesCole said:
Sorry to revive this old thread, but does anyone know if I move apps to an external or optibay hard drive, will they still be updated? I would think they would, but would like someone who has first-hand experience.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

WesCole,

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to throw my entire Lion/Apps over to a Pegasus R4 unit in Raid 0(450Mbps write/read) and when I went to run Photoshop from the R4 it loaded so fast I couldn't believe it. I only have a 1TB HD in my 2011 iMac but I couldn't get the iMac to boot to the R4. I may have to do a fresh install of Lion or something...still looking into it. I haven't had a chance to do the updater but I see no issue why it wouldn't update being on a different drive.
 
M

Michaelgtrusa

macrumors 604
Oct 13, 2008
7,900
1,821
smphoto74 said:
WesCole,

I used Carbon Copy Cloner to throw my entire Lion/Apps over to a Pegasus R4 unit in Raid 0(450Mbps write/read) and when I went to run Photoshop from the R4 it loaded so fast I couldn't believe it. I only have a 1TB HD in my 2011 iMac but I couldn't get the iMac to boot to the R4. I may have to do a fresh install of Lion or something...still looking into it. I haven't had a chance to do the updater but I see no issue why it wouldn't update being on a different drive.
Click to expand...



Faster than SSD.
 
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