How to save and store applications off your Mac?

[Aniej]

I think this is a pretty easy question (woops, guess it's not so easy afterall), but I am just not entirely confident of the answer so I wanted to double check. I rarely use some applications such as garageband, so I would rather dedicate all the space it takes up to items that I use more regularly.

My question is how do I save a complete application like this, including all its prefs and its additional files such as the instrument and recordings files off of my Mac? I am planning on placing it on my external hard drive. Can I just transfer the application, its prefs, and the assorted files onto the external hdd? And, perhaps most importantly, how do I find all the items associated with am applications such as prefs and other things i might not know about?

Thanks

 

[janey]

It's not very easy for the most part. Sometimes installing the app to the external works, but for others you could in theory drag all the stuff to the external, but you still need to tell the app where to look for the support files.

Some apps must run off the startup disk too, while the support files can be elsewhere, you get the idea. Vice versa too.

Ultimately I guess I mean that it depends on which app you plan on moving.

 

[killerrobot]

If you're really convinced about moving it all to an external, I would just do a spotlight search for the program name and it should find everything related to it.

I, personally, would just uninstall it and forget the "personal settings" especially if you hardly ever use them. I'm sure all those programs are on your install disk that you don't want to use anyways, so that's your backup.

 

[odinsride]

I think this is a pretty easy question (woops, guess it's not so easy afterall), but I am just not entirely confident of the answer so I wanted to double check. I rarely use some applications such as garageband, so I would rather dedicate all the space it takes up to items that I use more regularly.

My question is how do I save a complete application like this, including all its prefs and its additional files such as the instrument and recordings files off of my Mac? I am planning on placing it on my external hard drive. Can I just transfer the application, its prefs, and the assorted files onto the external hdd? And, perhaps most importantly, how do I find all the items associated with am applications such as prefs and other things i might not know about?

Thanks

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22402

First result on google..

 

[Aniej]

OK cool. So let me clarify one thing, I was not looking to necessarily be able to run the apps from the external hdd, I just wanted to store them for a later date. But, if it is possible to accomplish both, i.e., store on the external hdd and be able to run it from there I would ideally pick that option.

So the two apps I would like to try and move are garageband and iMovie HD.