Portable hard drive -- all apps (including PT) now portable

[ds914]

A month or two ago I posted to solicit suggestions/advice about using a portable hard drive to run all of my poker apps. Although I play primarily on my home machine, there are times when I'm able to play at work, when visiting friends/family, when out of town on business, etc. Basically, I wanted to be able to travel with my poker clients, PlayerView, spreadsheet and (most importantly) my PokerTracker database. I also didn't want to clutter other computers will all of these programs.

Poster "knowlesm" provided some help, and I eventually purchased a Western Digital Passport Portable 80.0GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive for about $150 on sale at Best Buy. The device attaches through a normal USB drive. It's rather small and quite durable (it's covered in some type of plastic/rubber). It also runs off the power from the CPU, so it doesn't need any other power supply.

Basically, all you need to do is run the install programs and have it download all of the files to the portable drive (make a new folder for each one so they're not on the top level of the folder arrangement). Then just create a shortcut to the .exe file on the top level. The good folks at PokerTracker supplied me with a second license key, and PlayerView offered to do the same.

After changing my locations of skins, databases, etc. (everything is now on an E: or F: drive rather than C, everything's been working well. Unfortunately, I couldn't get PlayerView to run off the portable drive, but GT+ has been a fine alternative. All in all, it's been a great investment. I would have paid much more just to know I could take my PT database anywhere.

Anyway, I said a while back that I would post if I ever purchased the drive and got it working. If you have any questions, let me know. My computer skills aren't bad, but any novice could probably get this set-up working fairly easily.

[The Truth]

I would like to get one to do this stuff, and fit on my key chain.

[gamblor333]

Do you find a noticeable decrease in speed from using the USB drive? Especially when running Poker Tracker?

[Tapin]

Did you have any problems with the registry only being written in the OS of the machine you installed on? Did you have to run the installer once per machine that you wanted to play from the portable drive, to get the registry issues sorted out?

[Voltron87]

how well does gt work? are there smaller/cheaper drives available?

[ds914]

Yeah, I opted for the larger drive because I can also use it for work-related stuff. I work in creative services, so I have some massive image and QuarkXPress files. However, they do have keychain-size drives (like this one), but they seem to be limited to 1 or 2 GB. Depending on the size of your PokerTracker database (mine is pretty big), one of these drives may or may not work for you.

[ds914]

Suprisingly, I haven't noticed any difference. And I usually connect through a standard USB drive, rather than the suggested USB 2.0. PlayerView seems to somtimes get choppy, but I had that problem before I moved everything to the portable drive. My PokerTracker database is pretty large, and I've had no problems with it.

[ds914]

Yeah, it will affect the registry the first time you install the program. I did this from my home computer, so that was ok. However, once it's installed to the portable drive, you don't need to reinstall the programs on each different computer.

[ds914]

GT+ seems to run pretty well. I only use it on my work computer for now (I prefer PlayerView), and it actually runs quite smooth.

They do make smaller and cheaper drives. Everything from the size of a keychain to the size of a toaster. Everything from 128MB to over 100 gigs. All the major electronics stores sell them (Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples, Amazon, etc.), or just do a web search for portable hard drives. You'll get a ton of hits.