Running GC from thumb drive.

[Colin Scott]

I run the PortableApps version of Gnucash under Windows XP, which I currently keep permanently on a thumb-drive, and I *have* run it on Windows 7 without the problems others have complained about.  (However, I was using Windows 7 Starter Edition, which I believe does not behave in quite the same way as full Win 7.)

The PortableApps allows you to run applications which you have installed into PortableApps (on the thumb-drive) but *not* installed into Windows, so you can in theory insert the drive into any Windows machine and fire it up.  In my experience it runs fine, and the only difficulty I have had is that if you don't ensure that the thumb-drive has the same drive letter on every machine you install it on then Gnucash can have trouble finding its data.

You need to be aware a) that there are wide variations in performance between different thumb-drive brands and models.  Gnucash is fairly I/O-heavy, so you would be well advised to not to pick too slow a drive, but you will probably notice hit in any case, even if it is not actually problematical.

The other advice I'd give is to remember that US drives are far more prone to both loss and failure than is your ard dis, so ensure that you keep a copy of the entire thumb-drive on a hard disk, and sync regularly.  If you arange things properly, you should also be able to run your accounts from this location  when you're at home ...

Colin