hello,
I have a acer aspire 3103WLMi notebook and am running out of room...told i had 2mb of free space...NOT GOOD!
Now i have been told that yes you can install and run programs from an external hd but it's not advisable...why is this...does anyone run poser from an external hd?
Also i am unsure of what to get my hd is 60GB PATA HDD is this something i need to match? I see a lot of External HD with SATA but not PATA can i use SATA ? Does it matter?
I don't know much about technical hardware stuff so any help would really be appreciated.
Thanks in advance

I have my poser program installed in my main C drive.  I have external runtimes for my poser content and I have those on my partitioned "D" drive with a mirror copy of my runtimes on my external notebook hard drive in case my computer crashes. But I access my runtimes from D drive.

I don't know about installing and running the actual program from an external drive though.

To free up space, you might want to look into compressing your poser runtimes, and if you are inclined to save .pz3 files, which are HUGE, then you might want to compress those too and burn them to a DVD or CD.

I would install Poser to the c: and do as Acadia says , a seperate runtime on another drive .

In win xp you can set a folder to be compressed by the operating system . It doesnt appear any different , the system compresses and decompresses on the fly. You can also compress your poser libraries to use the compressed file format in Poser. That will save heaps of room.

You can get a drive that is USB port connected , the size doesnt matter , the biggest you can afford.

I would look at doing a disk cleanup and archive off any older files not regularly used.  

60 mb with poser pz3 files is not enough. There is a python script in Poser to compress the libraries.

ok...i do have an external runtime on d drive as Acadia has, so what I do really need to do is....keep programs on c drive...get an external hard drive and basically put everything else there?
Ok so about the hard drive ...get one connected via usb yes and it doesn't matter what type?
I am just wondering if there's compatibility issues with types of hard drives etc...or are they basically all the same ie any notebook external hard drive can plug into any notebook?
Is that right?
I'll also look into compressing too

You can get some help with file compression in this thread:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3169372&ebot_calc_page#message_3169372

Ive got it installed on an external drive and all is well
it does sorta hiccup a bit when the drive spins up but all an all its fine

I have poser on an external HD without any problems. I have also the Poser 7 folder on my HD, so I can copy that to the PC where I need it, change, if necessary the name of the external HD, e. g. from e: to F: in the LibraryPrefs.xml and I have my Poser with all settings on each and every computer.

faeriemajikk,**
You can install almost any program on an external drive, period.
However I would recommend that you free some files on your main drive so that at least 5 GB is oper and it must remain open. Now you have enough space for a swop file if needed.
When you install to the external hard drive a couple of files (very little) will be installed to your C; drive but the majority will be on your external drive. Now Poser will work.

Please note that the above mentioned is my opinion and if other readers differ from me, keep in mind that every body is entitled to his/her own idiotic view. (Joke) I can not see why it will not work as a removable hard drive is nothing other than an extra hard drive.****
**

Go for it!  I've been running for years with both P6 & P4 installed on the same external drive with no problems at all.   None of Poser is on my C: drive.  It is a desktop XP system, but unless the laptop presents some quirk you should have no troubles.

A little overstatement perhaps, but really, the apps themselves run fine.  The only hassle I had was when initially switching over, some figures & props (just a few) had specific file path references to texture maps located outside Poser's Textures folder and those had to be changed to the new paths.   The "Correct Reference" app came in handy there, and  IIRC, I stuck in a few shortcuts in the old locations on the  C: drive that point to the new locations on the external drive for any specific file references in old files I failed to change.

I have Poser 5,6,7 and 7pro on E and runtimes in E and F
I am using Vista 64 bits and 3 hard drives

Don't know about an external drive but I'm running an Acer Aspire 7520 runnning Poser under Vista and with it installed on the D: drive.  Poser seems to run fine.  Don't try the same with DAZ though.  |It won't pick up ANY content installed after it's installed if you do.

I had a complete Poser4 installation burnt on CD some years ago - and it is still working - a bit slow, but it does.
Have no idea about Poser5/6/7 ...

Quote - hello,
I have a acer aspire 3103WLMi notebook and am running out of room...told i had 2mb of free space...NOT GOOD!

Indeed NOT GOOD, anything less than 5 Gb is too little.

Quote - Now i have been told that yes you can install and run programs from an external hd but it's not advisable...why is this...does anyone run poser from an external hd?

You can install any program on an external HD but it will be slow. A lot programs will only load portions of the executable in memory and load anything required on demand. As all external drives are always slower than anything internal this means a lot of delay in running the program. Also keep in mind that many shared components (DLL's) are always loaded in the Windows directory (so always on the internal drive). In general it is best to install all programs always on the internal drive.

Quote - Also i am unsure of what to get my hd is 60GB PATA HDD is this something i need to match? I see a lot of External HD with SATA but not PATA can i use SATA ? Does it matter?
I don't know much about technical hardware stuff so any help would really be appreciated.
Thanks in advance

One option would be to replace the internal drive. Regardless of the information of the manufacturer this is always an option, a 60 Gb internal drive is small nowadays and could be replaced with a larger drive at minimal cost (you will need to find somebody capable of copying the existing drive to your new drive). In general notebooks do not expose PATA (parallel connection, used only for internal drives) or eSATA (SATA is a serial connection used for internal drives, eSATA is the external drive connection) connectors so you will have to get a USB drive. You will have to check if your notebook have USB 1 or USB 2 connections (same connector but difference in speed) not all external drives can handle USB 1 connections.
Contact your local supplier (not one of the big stores). It may be cheaper to replace the internal drive (with copying and man hours) than getting an external drive. When you get another internal drive don't forget about a backup solution, so you may need to buy an external drive anyway for backing up your internal drive.