Portable Apps. Is it worth it?


jbcarreon123

jbcarreon123

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Hi. I downloaded loads of apps in my PC that it is slowing down my drive. So, I think about Portable apps. I have an spare USB 16GB drive (2.0) that I will use. I now downloaded FF Portable, and other apps so my hard drive will good. Now, it is worth it?
 

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My experience with "portable" apps is that they don't have to be actually installed to run. But they still take up space somewhere.

I've not tried running them from USB sticks, so that may be the way to do it to prevent using disk space.
 

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Hi there
Just having apps on a drive shouldn't affect its speed at all (unless drive - non SSD type) is critically full. If you've got poor disk performance then there's usually other problems such as very slow poor quality spinners with tiny cache and slow RPM, IDE type devices, over committed or incorrectly placed paging files, slow I/O bus on mobo etc etc.

In fact I could probably say that assuming sufficient RAM and not trying to run too many apps concurrently the biggest contributor I've seen to bad computer performance over the last 20 years or so has been dreadful I/O systems. - Even a mighty CRAY would run really slowly if it relied on Floppy Disks for its Disk I/O system !!!!.

Cheers
jimbo
 

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?
To disable Defender scanning all external drives, you can run this command in PowerShell as Admin:
Set-MpPreference -DisableRemovableDriveScanning 1
?
Format to exFat
 

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jbcarreon123 said:
I have an spare USB 16GB drive (2.0) that I will use. I now downloaded FF Portable, and other apps so my hard drive will good. Now, it is worth it?
Click to expand...

Quite a few of my apps are the portable version from PortableApps.com. In some cases that's because the version from the author's site contained bundled 'junkware' in the installer (Portable Apps make a point of removing all such 'extras'). In other cases because I wanted to try it out without doing a full install, and ended up keeping it. I run all mine from a Portable Apps folder on my hard drive, so there's no real saving in drive space.

All apps inside a Portable Apps wrapper load a a portable registry environment from their folder and save any changes to this. When closed there is nothing left behind in your own registry. As a consequence they can be a little slower to load initially, but then run as fast as if fully installed. Mine include Audacity, LibreOffice, TreeSizeFree and IrfanView. Running from a USB will inevitably make the initial loading a bit slower.

I did try Firefox Portable on one machine where I had reasons for not wanting to do a full install. I was impressed by the fact that while using it FF issued an update, which the portable version applied just as if it was the full install.
 

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    UPDATE - 11 April 2026: due to lid hinges starting to break up this laptop has been retired from active duty. The OS with all software and files has been migrated to my System Seven in 'Other systems' to carry on as my general purpose 'main machine'.

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    My SYSTEM EIGHT is a 2-in-1 convertible Lenovo Yoga 11e (5th gen) type 20LN, Celeron N4120, 8GB RAM, 512GB NVMe ssd, a supported device for Windows 11. Currently running Windows 11 Pro, plus Insider Beta, Experimental 263xx and 29xxx builds as native boot vhdx.
Bree said:
Quite a few of my apps are the portable version from PortableApps.com. In some cases that's because the version from the author's site contained bundled 'junkware' in the installer (Portable Apps make a point of removing all such 'extras'). In other cases because I wanted to try it out without doing a full install, and ended up keeping it. I run all mine from a Portable Apps folder on my hard drive, so there's no real saving in drive space.

All apps inside a Portable Apps wrapper load a a portable registry environment from their folder and save any changes to this. When closed there is nothing left behind in your own registry. As a consequence they can be a little slower to load initially, but then run as fast as if fully installed. Mine include Audacity, LibreOffice, TreeSizeFree and IrfanView. Running from a USB will inevitably make the initial loading a bit slower.

I did try Firefox Portable on one machine where I had reasons for not wanting to do a full install. I was impressed by the fact that while using it FF issued an update, which the portable version applied just as if it was the full install.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I used it. Devs on Firefox doesn't have an portable version of FF. So, PortableApps.com is my only choice. Some apps is portable, and some is available portable.

I can use WinPE, but if I do it, it will make the ISO size like an multi-architecture and multi-edition Windows 10 install ISO.
 

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System One System Two

  • At a glance

    Windows 11 HomeCore i5-12450HX20GB DDR5-4800iGPU + RTX 3050 Mobile (6GB)
    OS
    Windows 11 Home
    Computer type
    Laptop
    Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo
    CPU
    Core i5-12450HX
    Memory
    20GB DDR5-4800
    Graphics Card(s)
    iGPU + RTX 3050 Mobile (6GB)
    Sound Card
    Realtek
    Monitor(s) Displays
    the built-in laptop screen, and a generic monitor
    Screen Resolution
    1080p * 2
    Hard Drives
    GIGABYTE NVMe SSD 256GB (GP-GSM2NE3256GNTD)
    Micron NVMe SSD 512GB (MTFDKCD512QFM-1BDIAABLA)
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    WD

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    Windows 10 ProCore i3-21004GB DDR3-2133iGPU
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    Core i3-2100
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    1080p
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    WD
If you install portable apps, you can back them up separately from a Windows system image. This is a definite advantage as separating your system image from your User data backup can be an advantage for many applications, like Firefox. Then again some people just like one big system image.
 

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