What are the disadvantages in installing software to a removable devic

jarnie said:

I wasn't intending to use an SD card to continually write to.
What I intended to do was
1) Use the built in SSD drive to contain ALL the Windows 10 files (the laptop comes with W10 pre-installed)
2) Install 2 or 3 applications and make the destination for each the SD card. That way I would expect that the laptop would mainly only READ the SD card whenever I started any of the applications I installed there.
The swap file should remain on the SSD drive.
Does this make sense or is it realistic?

That's what I do. Like I mentioned I put games on SD card as they will not fit on my SSD. Games and other apps are mostly (exclusively as far as I have noticed) read only - your progress is generally written to %appdata% which is on the ssd anyway in your user directory.

As others have said SD cards are not supposed to be that reliable but mine have never failed and even ones you get from the supermarket for £10 give a years warrenty. Just back it up if you care if the thing breaks. I don't bother as you can always download apps again anyway.

I have tried both booting from SD card and running VMs from them and this worked but was slow. For what you propose I think and find it is a great solution.

Thanks Ix07.
Yes I will always keep a copy of the SD card with the laptop just in case.
I will also buy the class 10 ones which write faster (maybe read faster too).

I assume (you might have already mentioned) that you too have a laptop or similar with only 32GB SSD.
I am thinking that it must have a fast processor as you state that you run games on it.

John

jarnie said:

Thanks Ix07.
Yes I will always keep a copy of the SD card with the laptop just in case.
I will also buy the class 10 ones which write faster (maybe read faster too).

I assume (you might have already mentioned) that you too have a laptop or similar with only 32GB SSD.
I am thinking that it must have a fast processor as you state that you run games on it.

John

I have a MacBook pro laptop from 2012 with an i5 processor. It is hopeless at games but (if I prop it up, ignore the heat and fans and turn down the settings) it works just about. I don't think I'd attempt GTA though.

However it only has a 120GB SSD which is (very) expensive to upgrade on Apple hardware.

I have it partitioned with 32GB for windows (used to be 20GB which was impractical when upgrading) for windows. 20GB for OSX and the rest is shared partition on which I continually keep 2 Windows VM (for work) and 1 Arch Linux VM (for fun). It is very very tight space wise but I can't afford (well justify really) upgrading it.

So, not a tablet but I am limited space wise and I have 32GB for Windows I can't realistically extend.

By the way I've played games off the SD card on both OSX and Windows but (for me) it all runs much cooler temperature-wise when running on Windows.

In case you care, I have been using a 32GB SanDisk Ultra 40Mb/s card I got from a supermarket in the UK around Christmas 2014 for £10 I think. 32GB for me seems to be just about big enough to install one game but not much else.

When I grow up and stop this gaming experiment I'll put it back in my camera or write 50 billion spreadsheets or whatever would fit on a 32GB card :)